Campfires
by CelticFeather
Summary: A brooding clan-killer and a man who prefers to see himself more shark than human are not the most friendly of new partners. But hunted and hated, just surviving is a struggle, and the Akatsuki forms a complex refuge for its members. The lines between men, beasts, and gods begin to blur, and Itachi must either accept his complicity in evil, or instigate revolt.
1. Chapter 1: Dawn

_**Campfires:**_** Chapter 1: Dawn**

A brooding clan-killer and a man more shark than human are not the most likely, or friendly, of partners. But hunted and hated, just surviving is grueling, and the Akatsuki starts to form a complex refuge for its members. The lines between men, beasts, and gods blur, and Itachi must either accept his complicity in evil, or contemplate revolt.

Contains **M** rated violence.

This fanfiction is dedicated to those who saw intrigue and comradery in the Akatsuki and wanted to know more.

* * *

**-Uchiha Itachi-**

The tongues of flames danced against the stars like heathens frenzied before a war, springing into the night with a fibrous crackling. The one called Pain stood like a preacher, tall and black, his shadow painted by the leaping blaze onto the rockface behind him. His voice was low and commanding, yet vibrant, like velvet over steel. From everywhere and nowhere it echoed around the chasm like the voice of a god.

"And if you join us, Uchiha Itachi, make clear your mark."

Itachi raised his arm and the thick kunai glinted black and orange. The metal fang plunged down, and with a jumping spark, the knife slit a ragged slash across his headband's gentle leaf.

"You are damned to the world, Itachi. May you find refuge from its vices in our Dawn, and together we shall light the world in the rays of a new peace."

No devilish cheering welcomed their new member. There stood a half dozen of his new comrades in black robes with red clouds, their dark eyes peeking out from high collars. Among them he noted the bandages of a Mist swordsman, and he recognized the sly snake eyes of Orochimaru.

Now at least, damned by his nation as he was, Itachi had no orders to follow but his own. He would protect the Leaf from the shadows. And from this Akatsuki, whatever it was. He was washed with a strange sense of peace. It was not relief. What was done was done. _Compared to yours, our pain will be over in an instant_, his father's last words echoed through his mind. He was unsure if they were sympathetic or a dying man's curse. But it mattered not. The deed was done.

He wondered what had happened to Sasuke. The Hokage himself must be consoling him now. Maybe the boy would be sent to live with another family, or an orphanage. No, unsavory types would be waiting to adopt the boy.

"Hey, you."

Itachi looked over, his thoughts of family broken. A man older and taller than he had prodded him on the shoulder.

"Name's Kakuzu. Follow the rules, don't be stupid, and I won't kill you." He gave Itachi a small leather pouch.

"What is this?"

"Ten thousand yen."

An unexpected gift. But since his days in the Anbu, Itachi was reticent to show surprise around people he wasn't sure he liked.

"That's for the month. If you need food or an inn, buy it. Petty theft is beneath us, and attention costs money."

Ten thousand yen was hardly generous for a month's travels. In fact, an ordinary human would die of exposure. The inflation rate had been such that fifty years ago one could travel a few weeks on 10,000 yen. Now it would suffice for only a few bowls of ramen.

"Hey now, Kakuzu! Let him live a little bit! No one lives forever! Oh wait, you do, heheHAHA!"

Kakuzu narrowed his eyes hatefully at the interruption. The high pitched voice sounded like it belonged to a teenager. Itachi looked in its direction, and giggles simmered from behind the orange spiraled mask.

Kakuzu growled, and 'Tobi' yelped and wilted. Finding the boy sufficiently scared, Kakuzu did not press his advantage. Itachi suppressed his unease: the disguised, giggling, Uchiha Madara was also alive far beyond a human lifespan. It unnerved him to see him manifest this boyish farce after they had worked together only hours prior to massacre their clan. But Itachi's face remained an aloof, impatient mask.

"Rumor has it," a woman's cool voice uttered to him, "Kakuzu fought the first Hokage."

"Is that so," Itachi echoed. If true, this Kakuzu would be eighty-five years old at minimum. He only looked forty. It seemed that Orochimaru and Madara were not unique among those who experimented with eternal youth. He would have to tread carefully here.

Itachi studied the woman. She was older than him, early twenties maybe. Her hair was bluish. He had only now seen her leave Pain's side, and she was the only female member of the group. He wondered if she and pain were romantically involved. It was strangely like an academy clique: the one woman had chosen the highest ranking man of the group.

"Konan is my name," she told him. "I hope you can find a home here."

"Uchiha Itachi. A pleasure." She did not seem terrible.

The mist ninja with the executioner's sword and red face paint stepped forward to Itachi. He smiled his mangled, filed, teeth at Itachi, and extended his bandaged hand. "Looks like you're the only other shoe without a mate, kid. Biwa Juzo."

"Now," the gravelly voice of Pain claimed order. "Our organization needs to gather funds if we are to achieve our goals. You have your partners and your missions- you are dismissed."

* * *

Three years later, Juzo was dead.

Itachi did not know if the swordsman understood he would die when he jumped to shield Itachi from the Misukage's strike, or if it had been an impulse he did not live to regret. The Kage's blast had shattered his sword, and sated its iron-hungry blade in its owner's abdomen. Not risking a burial, Itachi had returned the hilt to Juzo's hand and fled the Land of Water for his life.

He wondered if he was still there— if the crows found him. He hoped they had. If it were him, he would prefer crows to the Mist intelligence corp- and especially to Zetsu.

Itachi's newest partner revealed himself just a few hours ago. The eyes that now walked beside his were white and devoid of mammalian emotion and Itachi had not yet noticed Hoshigaki Kisame blink. The ex-mist ninja was of hulking stature, maybe two meters, which brought Itachi's highest hairs up only to his jaw. He might have been thirty years old, the ichthyian face made hard to tell. His skin carried a faint bluish sheen, and his cheekbones were slashed with what could best be described as partial gills. Itachi had once pondered a similar thought with Orochimaru: _Were you born looking like an animal?_

The newly recruited mist ninja's reasons for requesting to be partnered with the parricidal Uchiha were ignoble. By the end of the bizarre introduction speech involving live shark births, this Kisame seemed to advocate fratricidal cannibalism. Respecting Itachi because he killed his family was a poor way to gain his admiration.

"Isn't this a mission for state ninja?" Kisame's voice broke his thoughts. "A jounin could handle this."

"The Land of Iron has no ninja village," Itachi said. "The Ishikawa tiger, too, is an endangered species, and I do not think the neighboring waterfall ninja would agree to hunt it."

Earlier, the pair had debriefed each other on their strengths and strategies. Kisame, as far as he had trusted to self-report, had massive stamina, lethal dexterity with water style, and was skilled with the chakra absorbing sword he carried. Itachi had listed fire style, shuriken, and genjutsu as his advantages. It seemed a profitable marriage of skills.

"Hm. Now, how to find the poor sap?"

"My tracking skills are… _above average,_" Itachi said. Red gleamed out from under his high collar.

"Right. I'll let you lead."

Itachi's world flared in the expanded spectrum of colors and avian detail of the sharingan. He looked at the tree limbs above them, where a bird's nest balanced lithely on a swaying branch. In the nest's carefully woven lining was a tiny tuft of orange fibers: a mixture of orange guard hairs and slightly lighter whitish underfur. Among the orange was a single black hair of the same length.

A few minutes later he saw some twigs broken by a large quadruped. Then he saw a smeared paw print with retracted claws. They continued into a shallow ravine. Kisame followed quietly, but a crackle came from his direction: his living sword was excited.

Itachi peered from the bushes and signaled to Kisame. Through a leafy window they spied a massive cat, far larger than an ordinary animal, nearing the size of a horse carriage. Bunches of muscles rippled on its haunches as it lapped a sandpaper tongue at the creek. Facing profile to them, it yawned, and fangs longer than kunai flashed in the sunset. Itachi reached into his robe to draw a single knife. A strike to the brain would be sufficient.

"Allow me," Kisame said, unshouldering the huge, blunt, Samehada from his back. "Pity to let such nice chakra soak the sand."

Itachi tipped his knife back into his robe in consent. More than he would like to see the mission completed, he would like to observe how this Hoshigaki Kisame operated.

Kisame alighted before the beast in the clearing. Surely the tiger was unaccustomed to being approached by anything living, especially not something smaller than it. It sprang with coiled fury at the man that dared, but its front claws met only earth. Shiny brown river pebbles sprayed loudly into the air and clattered back down to the ground.

Brandishing the thirty-kilo sword, a grinning Kisame landed spritely five meters from the tiger's impact. With the darting grace of a tropical fish, he danced away from the cat's frustrated strikes, his sword carving the air around it, but never cutting it, until the cat grew weak. At last it stared at the two calm men, panting, black lips curled back over yellow teeth.

Kisame's silver eyes roved curiously to him. "Can you sedate it, Itachi?"

The cat's pupils, black slashes on yellow disks, dilated to wide spheres as Itachi set the animal under a genjutsu. It was always a strange procedure with beasts. Genjutsu involved manipulating chakra flow to the brain, and in a brain that was not human, it was a coarse process. Itachi could not communicate complex images like he could with humans, so instead he instilled it with feelings of darkness and warmth.

Kisame approached the sleeping tiger and drew the broadside of Samehada along its jugular. The sword's scales rippled, and Itachi knew the cat was dead without a mark on its body. Itachi revealed his kunai from his robe.

"Could probably get the Akatsuki some gold for the pelt," Kisame said, slinging the purring Samehada to his back.

Probably they could. But Itachi was not Kakuzu, and he did not desire to carry a bloody tiger pelt around for a few extra yen. Itachi crouched over the carcass, and with careful incisions he removed its teeth. They clattered against each other in his leather pouch. Whatever some royal leech would do with them to cure his presumed impotency, Itachi did not know.

"Someone's coming," Kisame warned him.

"Just merchants," Itachi said. The rogues sprang into the trees. They heard the surprise of the men to find the freshly killed tiger. They'd feed the village! Get drunk! They invoked the gods for their luck. Kisame smiled devilishly but Itachi was unamused. Soon enough, the two rouge ninja were over the border of the Land of Rice.

Obtain the teeth, the scroll, the real or metaphorical scalp- the object was the only variable. Then he brought them to a collection office. He gave the reward to Kakuzu and awaited further orders. The string of missions seemed to be the only constant in Itachi's life since the Uchiha massacre.

The sun yellowed and sank as they traveled. Juzo, his senior, was usually the one to suggest a pause. But now that Juzo was dead, Itachi supposed this responsibility fell to him now. He slowed, halted, and sprang down from the tree to the clayish earth. A shaded wood surrounded them, and willow boughs trailed gently on a narrow, clear river with a sandy bank. The sinking sun painted dappled golden strokes on the surface of the water, and a fish tail slapped from the waves. Kisame alighted after him.

"What do you say, Itachi? Fancy a fish dinner? We'll see who can catch the most." Kisame's gently rough voice was surprisingly only baritone for a man his size.

As many fish as two elite ninja could catch? "What a wanton slaughter."

"I can eat a lot of fish," Kisame said.

"We'll do first to catch five," Itachi decided.

"Perfect."

Kisame strode to the bank. With a blur of signs and motion of his arm, a sphere of water rose, and a wriggling green bass shimmered inside. He released it from the water prison jutsu and the first thrashing fish tumbled to the earth, and he removed its gills with a stomp. Kisame raised his hand to snare his next victim.

Itachi slid kunai between his knuckles like bear claws, three in his right, two in his left. He ignited his sharingan, and like an osprey he saw through the water like glass. He pinpointed the motion of five adult fish, observed the current, and noted the water's angle of refraction. He jumped high, extended his arms, and let the kunai fly. Easily as wooden targets, each knife struck its living mark.

"Impressive," Kisame said with restrained mirth, dispelling a ball of water and depositing another fish on the bank. "But in my book, fish don't count as caught when they're pinned to the bottom of a creek."

There may have been a flicker of perturbance on Itachi's face. But probably not. Itachi was not annoyed.

Itachi shed his robe and with a few launching steps he pierced the chilled water in a shallow dive. The fish were weighted by the knives to the riverbed, their eyes wide and mouths open. He snatched the knives by the handles and kicked hard towards the surface.

When Itachi breached, he looked to the bank to see Kisame perched on a tree root, one elbow on his knee, grinning widely. His five fish were lined up in size-order at his feet, each about the length of a sandal.

"A bit too slow, unfortunately," Kisame grinned.

"I knew I lost the moment I had to dive in," Itachi said, stepping drenched to the bank. Having to _retrieve_ the fish was a technicality.

"No, Itachi. You lost the moment you humored a shark to a fishing match."

_Doubtful, _Itachi thought. But he said nothing as he removed the knives and placed his five fish on the bank.

"Would you go find some sticks to spit them on?" the victor asked with a gesture to the forest.

Itachi did so. Upon returning, Kisame had gathered kindling and larger branches, and arranged them into a conical shape

"Be a pal and light us up?"

Itachi wove a sign and blew a thin jet of flame at the base of the cone. Which, aerating nicely, set the tiny pyre ablaze.

"We both have our fields Itachi. You're not _terrible _at fishing... for a leaf ninja." Kisame said.

The two rogues speared their ten fish in a radial pattern around the flames. Perhaps a bit too soon, Kisame selected a fish and sank his huge teeth into its head. A wretched, wet, splintery sound crunched across the flames as Kisame ate his catch skull, spine, organs and all. Maybe he was doing it to see if bothered Itachi. Kisame grinned. Or maybe that was just his face. Either way the mist ninja's huge triangular teeth made quick work of the food.

Itachi bit into the side of his fish, now especially careful not to eat its needle thin ribs. Its flesh was moist, hot and salty, and he felt strength flowing back into his body. He allowed his spine to sink against the tree trunk he leaned against. He was cold, wet, and tired, and it felt good to have a hot meal around a fire… Even with company as reptilian as Kisame.

At that moment, a sudden jab of pain split behind Itachi's eyes and he coughed into his hand. He discreetly curled his fingers into a fist to conceal the blood on his palm.

"Eat a bone?"

Itachi cleared his throat and swallowed the blood. "No."

Kisame grunted, his eyes flashing from his soaked partner to the icy stream. "Do you drink, Itachi?"

Alcohol? "Not alone."

"You killed your whole family, you might as well start the fun kind of sinning." Kisame tossed the greasy stick into the forest and reached for the next largest fish. As he bit a steaming, flaky hunk out of it, he reached for a waterskin on his body. He removed the cap, and passed it to the young man.

"Kakuzu would not be pleased to hear what you spend your allowance on," Itachi said.

"That _stinge_ gave me his speech. He can try to punish me."

"Kakuzu has already killed two members of the Akatsuki."

Kisame laughed. "You're kidding!"

"Afraid not."

"Did Pain punish him?"

"No. Our leader has many killers, but only one bookkeeper."

"Hm. Better hope we develop new talents then, eh?"

Itachi took a few swallows of the sharp but sweet sake and returned the skin to Kisame. Kisame sniffed the lip of the waterskin: he closed his eyes but made no remark.

The fire flickered lower. Itachi had gathered a little pile of fish bones at his feet. Fish were pretty animals, not frivolous, with graceful spines and streamlined skulls. He counted three heads in his pile. He was comfortably full. Kisame had eaten seven of them, bones and all.

"I learned something today- I wasn't sure you could use genjutsu on a tiger," Kisame said. He picked his huge teeth with a shard of rib, then chewed on it as if it were a stem of wheat. He did this until it was pliable, and then swallowed it.

"Men and beasts are very different," Itachi said.

"_Are they?_" It was a challenge rather than a simple reaction. Kisame's contracted eyes studied him.

"Yes." Itachi held his gaze.

Kisame grunted but said nothing. Instead of glancing down in defeat, his hard eyes swept deliberately and coolly to the side. Thus, Kisame postponed a conclusion to their discussion, at least until he was certain he could win it. The mist ninja sat with his hands clasped over his stomach. They rested by the fire until it elapsed into smoke and the spirited flames sobered into glowing black and red coals.

"So Itachi, how does this work? Do we sleep on the ground? Take watches?"

"In peaceful conditions, I don't watch. But I do sleep in a tree for concealment," Itachi said.

"Leaf ninja," Kisame muttered. "Sleeping in trees like a bunch of _monkeys_."

In a flicker, Itachi had climbed the oak above them to its lowest fork. Kisame covered the ashes with a kick and leapt to the limb opposite him. They faced each other for a moment, chins down, listening in the silence for possible observers. Sensing no one, Kisame turned his back and fastened Samehada to the underside of the branch. The weave of his robe was tight and warm, and Itachi tipped his chin inside its high collar. His breath filled the cavity with warm air, and it was not uncomfortable.

Crickets chirped. Neither of them said good night.

* * *

Dawn corded its cold light through the pine needles and onto Itachi's eyelids. As he parted their red curtains, he saw a young crow. It stared for a moment, curious at the oddly placed human, then shuffled its wings and darted off. Rising gently, Itachi stepped to the other side of the trunk to rouse his new partner.

Round fish eyes opened on his approach. "Did you know, sharks never fully sleep?"

_Great. _

"Let's get these teeth to the collection point," Itachi said.

He led the way until the building became visible from the forest. As was often the case, the underground bounty office had its cover as a mortician's practice. Morticians had plenty of space for storing bodies, and arriving there from the country with a corpse on one's shoulder was considered only slightly rude.

"Who goes in?" Kisame asked.

"I'll go. You watch."

Itachi entered the building: he tipped his chin under his collar until only his coal black eyes peered out. Itachi was not an immediately intimidating man. He was of average height, average build, perhaps even thin. There was nothing special about his coloration. But the representative at the counter knew the red-clouded robes, and rising from his collar, Itachi's eyes gleamed garnet.

The collection man's knuckles tensed a tendinous white as he stared at the approaching Akatsuki. Itachi halted, and hailed him as stipulated:

"What rings the Dawn, and shall bring Man to his haven?"

"Our world glimpses Death's yawn: the hoarse call of the raven."

Good. Itachi placed his pouch with the teeth on the counter. The man inspected the smooth oranged teeth and accepted them. He set a case of cash on the counter and displayed it to the Uchiha. Itachi did not count the money: no contractor had been foolish enough to short change the organization since a recent incident involving Kakuzu.

One million yen. Not bad for a glorified pet hunt. Now they just had to deliver the money to the Akatsuki's ancient master of coin or one of his henchmen. The zombie pair were conducting a mission some forty kilometers away; they could meet them in just a few hours.

"I'll carry that," Kisame said when Itachi emerged with the large briefcase. Itachi gave it to him wordlessly and they set off north. They traveled a quiet hour before Kisame spoke.

"I smell blood."

Itachi had sensed nothing unusual. Kisame's strengths were complementary to his indeed. With a gesture of his hand, Itachi instructed Kisame to lead. The shark-ninja's sense of smell was better than his, but not at the level of a ninja hound's, because in about 100 meters, Kisame had grounded himself on a dirt cart path.

Hung upside down on a tree was a human body. The victim's feet were tied together with a strip of cloth and jabbed through with a stake into the trunk. Itachi thought the man was less than thirty minutes dead. Blood dripped down from his death wound, down his sternum, his throat, to collect on the jut of his jaw and dye maroon swirls in the muddy water of the cart treds.

"Huh," Kisame surmised, wrinkling his wide nose. He looked at Itachi for input.

"This is the Akatsuki's doing. One of us makes such displays," Itachi said.

Itachi cut down the corpse. He strode powerfully, urgently, along the path. Between the trees appeared a traditional inn with the peaked roof of mountain tribes, dark wood paneling, and pale stucco walls. An inn of the piquant sort, judging by the oiran fan and floral carvings on the upper balconies. A familiar black robe with red clouds lay discarded on a bench outside.

"Do Akatsuki go to brothels?" Kisame asked.

Itachi didn't answer. On the ground outside the brothel was a circle drawn in blood. "He's going to kill those women."

"So?"

Itachi rushed forward.

At the instance of his arrival, an individual strode out of the building's door. He was young, zealous, handsome, and walked with his smooth chest bared. His muscled arm was wrapped around the thin waist of a pale woman with long black hair. Mid sentence, he recognized Itachi.

"Hey hey, Itachi! Wouldn't think I'd find you at a place like this. Where's your new partner?" Hidan greeted.

Itachi's voice was low. "You paid these people for a service. Their deaths were not part of that."

Like a friendly dog Hidan smiled. A friendly dog, who just in case the friend was a foe, smiled to remind him he had teeth. "Well! I haven't paid anyone yet, and I think Lord Jashin will appreciate their talent!"

The woman's smile faltered. No sooner had she realized the danger, Hidan threw her against the wall and held her by the throat. He drew his pike.

That damn Kakuzu. Maybe if he wasn't squeezing Hidan's purse, the cultist would not have extra incentive settle his debts with death. Or maybe Hidan would just kill anyone weaker than him regardless. Itachi's patience for negotiation had elapsed. Flickering, he grabbed the girl and deposited her next to Kisame in the yard.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Kisame said, but Itachi had already flickered back to Hidan some ten meters away.

Now Hidan's teeth flashed impatiently when he spoke. "You're annoyingly noble for a member of an evil organization, you know that?"

"Where is Kakuzu," Itachi asked, though as customary for him, his voice forwent the submissive rise pitch at the end that differentiated a question from a command. The bothersomely rational waterfall ninja would surely restrain his partner from this idiocy if he were around.

"Think I need him, huh?"

"Idiots require supervision."

Shrieking, Hidan raised his scythe and sprang at Itachi.

_Sharingan!_ Hidan froze.

Inside the genjutsu realm, Hidan was tied to a tree trunk. Itachi created a replica of the retractable pike he tried to use on the prostitute, and with its sharp point, Itachi punctured the man's intestines. Drawing it out, Hidan flexed his fingers in convulsing pain and howled like a jackal.

Itachi felt a presence in his realm he did not invite. A hulking black monster lumbered out from behind the trunk, humanoid in shape with flesh of black fire revealing a white skeleton. It had a skull like a goat and its glowing pink eyes regarded Itachi hungrily. Hidan's trembling lips parted in rapture as he beheld it. With a bony talon the monster pressed Hidan on his sweating forehead.

The brothel, the forest, the yard had returned. The genjutsu was broken. Itachi seized a reactionary few steps back. Hidan was not skilled enough to break out of that on his own. What was that skeletal monster? Did he just witness his god?

"You," Hidan said breathily. Trembling and weakened, he leant on his scythe as he stood. "You'll pay for that!" he swore, swinging the blade at Itachi's throat

Itachi would have to fight Hidan without genjutsu. His ninjutsu wouldn't kill him. And close quarters taijutsu was risky, since one graze could make that blood ritual of his troublesome. He would have to incapacitate Hidan. Chop off a limb. That was how he would win.

Hidan swung at Itachi with the graceless zeal of a chunin, and each time, his weapon only met the air. Itachi drew his tanto blade. Hidan smashed his scythe into the earth on another missed strike, which grounded him. Placing all of his strength in the blow, Itachi cleaved through Hidan's tibia, crushed his fibula, and Hidan was gracelessly grounded, separated from the bottom half of his leg. Bleeding heavily, Hidan's severed shin spun to a halt a few meters away.

"FUCK!"

In the corner of his vision Itachi was aware of Kisame observing: he had been ready to act, but must have decided it unwise. Itachi paced forward, shortsword swinging, and when he swung it through the air, the blood leapt off in a fine spray to speckle a tree in red. The blade had cracked beyond repair: he had been reckless to cleave the two bones in Hidan's shin in one strike. To the music of Hidan's curses, Itachi began to wipe the soiled blade in the grass. He would have to bury the thing, better children did not find it.

The toothed crown of a plant, like a venus fly trap, emerged from the grass nearby. Zetsu's head had materialized from the dirt and Itachi's hands stilled in surprise.

"Hello, Zetsu," Itachi greeted the head.

"Hello." Then, "They're here, Pain," the strange plant ninja said.

Pain appeared. Robe billowing, he stood between Hidan and Itachi. His presence was magnetic and every head turned to him.

"What," Pain growled, "is the meaning of this infighting?"

"I was just... behind on my sacrifices..." Hidan breathed from the ground, and struggled to prop himself up. "When this prick insulted me, gutted me in a genjutsu, and then. Lobbed. Off. My. Fucking. Leg."

"Hidan. Killing civilians and leaving witnesses awards you with the bounty of the five nations. We can not afford this attention."

"Sorry about that, sir," Hidan muttered, looking diffusively at the ground.

Pain's attention swiveled to the next unruly young adult. "Itachi, we are no heroes. Never compromise our goals by attacking our members."

Itachi dipped his chin in an acknowledgement that was not quite submission.

Pain strolled forward to the wooden building. The brothel's matron, three prostitutes, and a few men stared out at the colorful flock of S ranked ninja from the porch and balcony. Pain extended his right arm and their eyes filled with alarm.

"What are you doing?" Itachi demanded.

Pain unfurled his fingers. "Shinra Tensei."

The wooden house exploded in a rain of splinters and structure. Wooden beams and ceramic roof tiles hailed down around them. Itachi searched Pain's expression for a reason. Instead, Pain's ringed eyes fixated at the surviving girl who stood shivering next to Kisame.

"Kisame," Pain ordered.

Massive Kisame took the girl, placed either hand on the side of her face, framing it in a gesture that seemed almost intimate. But a ligament in Kisame's forearms twitched, and she was dead before her corpse hit the ground.

Fire erupted from the uprooted gas pipes and ravenous flames quickly devoured the wooden house. The black beams stood like a skeleton among a roaring, moaning fire that devoured the wood and paper structure. The intense dry heat prickled against the moisture of Itachi's scleras, but despite it, he could not blink.

Pain rounded on Itachi. Backlit by the flames, he saw his own face reflected in the rippling fog-colored eyes that locked him.

"Our enemies hunt us as we speak. Because of you, Itachi, too many saw too much. If I decide that anyone is disloyal to the Akatsuki, I will kill him."

Itachi stared into eyes more ancient, more evolved, and more knowing than his own. He learned then he was not free in his outlawry. Even he must tread the line between light and dark as closely as he dared. Should his steps toward the light be too obvious, he would find his own neck on the rope, and dead men can protect no one.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

暁 Akatsuki = Dawn

A step away from my usual work, but I've fallen in love with Naruto Shippuden. I have chapter two, _Cannibals_, about finished and will post it soon. I also always list the % complete of the next chapter on my author profile. This will be a long and ambitious piece, with the plot already outlined and some 70 pages already written.

Special thanks to myochiikurin for her hard work beta-reading this chapter!

Feedback is greatly appreciated,

Kelto


	2. Chapter 2: Cannibals

** -Uchiha Itachi-**

Itachi crouched, his long fingers knitted before his nose, his eyes staring intensely out. He would not be killed by his own teammates. If he continued to try and save every peasant he saw, he would expose his true alignment. He would have to be judicious in his steps towards the light if he were to continue making them. He must appear a killer until, at last, he was allowed to die.

His eyes traced to Kisame. To be effective here, he would have to act less like a man, more like a beast, and he thought he had a fine teacher.

Word of a new mission had been shared from the head. According to Kakuzu, a terrorist organization had hired the Akatsuki to sabotage a maritime hostage exchange between the lands of Water and Lightning. Ideally, one of the ships would explode after the exchange. The commissioners intended for this to promote war between the Cloud and Mist. The Akatsuki team could expect at least twenty-five escorting enemy jounin. Kisame, Itachi, Kakuzu and Deidara had been enlisted for the task.

Kisame grumbled. "Returning to the Mist is not ideal for me."

Itachi mirrored the sentiment. He had not exactly enjoyed his last mission in the Land of Water. But first they had to meet Kakuzu and Deidara, who had received instructions to meet them at one of Kakuzu's meeting points in the coastal Land of Hot Springs. When the fire and water pair arrived, Deidara and Kakuzu awaited them.

"Decent group," Kakuzu surmised. "Serious, for the most part." His surveying eyes lingered on Deidara for a moment too long.

Appearing unaware of the slight, Deidara crossed his arms. "I don't know why he didn't keep us with our usual partners. My man Sasori is as impatient and deadly as you are, Kakuzu, hm."

"Our selection is obvious. _I_ know hostage exchanges. You'll blow up the ship. Kisame is the ocean expert, and Itachi's eyes can cover us from afar. It's _easy_ if you _pay attention_," Kakuzu said.

Deidara shrugged his haughty ambivalence to the elder's analysis. Kisame led them to the coastline of the Land of Steam that marked its border with the Land of Water. Itachi suspected Hidan had not been invited on a mission that required passage through his home state for two reasons: he was inept at stealth; and he was still recovering from their last encounter. The four entered a coastal marsh of mangrove trees, which at the current low tide, exposed a long stretch of mud and sand before the eastern ocean. The gray noon sky began to darken, fizzing rain drops spotting the fine sand.

Kisame tightened the strap on his sword to prevent its shifting. "We'll have to run several kilometers over open ocean until we find any ships. I expect that's no problem for anyone?"

"That could be taxing if we must later fight," Itachi said, staring over the gray frothing sea.

Deidara smiled at the opportunity to upstage Itachi. He was clearly not one to forget old wounds. "Can't handle it, old man?"

Itachi said nothing.

"We won't waste chakra wandering the ocean," Kakuzu said. "Deidara, you'll fly ahead of us. Find the ships, and we'll follow."

Deidara's only response to the order was a tight grunt. He sank his hand into the pouch at his hip, and the mouth on his palm proceeded to masticate the pure white clay. After a moment Deidara displayed his hand to the three other ninja, and the lolling tongue delivered a fine porcelain bird with long narrow wings like a gull. With a sign from Deidara's free hand, the clay figure expanded to the size of a shed. The sculptor mounted its sloped back and adjusted his eye scope.

"I'll circle in a figure eight when I find the boats. Someone shoot off a lightning flare if you lose me, yeah?"

With a powerful sweep of its wings, Deidara and his creation were stiffly alight in the buffeting ocean wind, and like a kite in a storm, the bird rose jerkily but rapidly. The three remaining ninja set out into the sucking, salty, sandy, surf. Itachi focused his chakra onto the soles of his feet and timed his steps to rise above each peak of the coming waves. Arms streamlined behind them, their feet glancing off the obtuse crest of each wave, the fire, water, and earth-style ninja streaked off towards the eastern horizon after Deidara's bird. The sky was a tumultuous gray and the ocean frothed a dark blue. Cold rain spat into their faces, the wind raged, and distant thunder boomed.

With his sharingan, Itachi had the best vision of the group, while the others squinted to find the white bird against the silver clouds. Because of this he assumed the lead of the surface formation as the storm worsened. Deidara's clay bird seemed to slow, as if in hesitation, and then began to loop two small figure eights. Itachi motioned for his teammates to continue east until they were directly underneath Deidara, and there the three ninja crouched low to the surface of the undulating waves. They could now see two ships in the distance, which meant that to ordinary eyes, the three ninja were also visible. Irksome as it was to balance on the tipping crests, the whipping storm provided much needed visual cover on the open ocean.

Deidara's bird pitched downwards, beak first, then pulled up to skid its belly across the waves near the three ninja. Deidara had been busy on his flight- stepping onto the water, the artist grandly presented a smooth white clay koi fish the size of a basket.

"She works underwater. Once we attach it to the Cloud ship's hull, I'll activate her from here, and, _bang!_" Deidara popped his fingers and his face lit with excitement. With a histrionic bow, he gave the ornately carved explosive fish to Kisame. "For you, my man."

Kisame smirked and raised the bomb in farewell. He released the chakra at his feet and plummeted like a lead weight under the waves. Itachi could see his shadow streak off toward the ships, about 100 meters away. The Kisame-shaped shadow swam without using its arms, faster than he thought possible for any human, though Kisame and human seemed separate concepts.

The three remaining ninja sank their bodies into the cold waves, until just their eyes and noses showed above the water. Itachi noticed a crest of hair like a shark fin arc above the surface on the way back from the ship. It was Kisame's signal that he had completed the task and attached the explosive.

Kakuzu identified a woman as the hostage entering the skiff with her captors. The peaceable exchange occurred, and she climbed back aboard her country's ship. Kakuzu looked at Deidara and nodded. The exchange was complete and the deed could occur at any time.

"Katsu!" Deidara commanded, two fingers raised, but no one heard him, because 100 meters away the Cloud ship's front half exploded.

Wood splintered into the air and a shock wave concussed the water's surface, sending up a spray of mist. Shinobi leapt out, perching like waterbugs on the ripples. But civilians onboard had no such talents. The shinobi swarmed like bees, trying to orchestrate a platform in the debris for the floundering civilians, and simultaneously search for foul play.

The Mist ninja on their unharmed boat did not flee. Nor did the Cloud attack them. Seeming rather confused, the Mist ninja alighted on the waves, and began to help the foreign Lightning civilians onto their surviving boat.

The three rogues, each a child of war, shared a perplexed look. Then back at the boat and debris. As far as Itachi knew, the Mist and Cloud helping each other was not accounted for in the financier's plan.

A hulking presence appeared among the surface-striding ninja. Itachi did not need to verbally identify the man for Kakuzu and Deidara, because with a furious roar he cracked a huge lightning bolt across the atmosphere. It was Ay, the fourth Raikage.

"That was not in the missive. We run- as fast as we can." Kakuzu said.

Itachi was unsure speed would be enough. The Raikage was possibly the fastest ninja alive. One of them might die that day.

Deidara extended his hand out of the water and expanded his previously shrunken bird. Kakuzu yelled at him not to do it, that he would be seen, but the young ninja was more interested in saving his own skin. Deidara leapt alone onto the bird and flew off, leaving Itachi and Kakuzu in the waves. Kisame was still nowhere to be seen and Itachi felt the situation rapidly spiraling out of control. Kakuzu swore with the skill of a man with ninety years of curation.

The low bird was immediately spotted by a Cloud kunoichi, who signaled it to her comrades. Deidara had escaped, but the sharp eyes of the Raikage met the clay gull and fell circumspectly to the easier prey beneath. Itachi tensed, ready to dive, but their eyes met and he knew they had been seen.

"Rendezvous at our beach at dusk," Kakuzu told Itachi. "We've gotta lose him."

Kakuzu rose fully from the water, released one of the masked beings from his chest, and skated along the surface towards the distant shore some five kilometers away. Twenty ninja, both Cloud and Mist, started after Kakuzu. The water-style masked beast ran alongside Kakuzu, then halted, pulsing a huge mass of water at the incoming team of jounin. Itachi made a sharp turn away from Kakuzu, and sprinted towards the coastline.

Itachi was aware he had gained his own pursuers. Once separated from Kakuzu, he skidded on the ball of his right foot and pivoted to face his opponents. A phalanx of some fifteen ninja ran towards him. He doubted they recognized him, but all the same he was greeted with the hospitality a clan killer deserved.

He parsed signs, inhaled deep, and blew a massive blooming fireball across the waves. Some were touched by the blaze, but others quickly put up a defensive water wall, minimizing their casualties. Good: Itachi did not want to kill anyone. A huge man stepped from behind the falling water-wall. His copper skin was beaded with droplets, his bleached hair was coiled back, and from his small eyes Itachi sensed an unbridled fury.

Itachi supposed the Raikage must have pursued either he or Kakuzu. Unfortunately for the Kage, he had picked the rogue whose eyes could strike a man still at a distance of twenty meters. With the incensed Raikage in his sights, Itachi felt his pupils spin and contract.

_Tsukuyomi_ washed over his foe. Though it was a mere second to the outside world, the Raikage was inside the nightmare realm for seventy internal hours. But Itachi's intent was to incapacitate the Kage from further combat than torment him. He had no time or energy to waste on torturous mind games like with Hidan, and he neither want to enrage powerful enemies. Itachi's illusion abandoned the Raikage in a world where he was tied to a post, submerged at sea, with his nose just a millimeter above the waves. As soon as the Raikage collapsed among his men, Itachi fled.

The storm clouds hung low, the waves ripped high, the wind and rain whipped, and even Itachi's eyes could discern no shore. He was running, aware of a splitting pack of the Kage's incensed men behind him, and with each step Itachi took, he was less able to bounce crisply on the meniscus of the water. His toes punctured the water an inch down. Then two inches. Then his ankles, his calves, began to touch the waves. He was nowhere near escape, and he was out of time. He would have to use _that_. Spinning, he turned to face his pursuers, now surprisingly close.

_Amaterasu! _The black flames of his newest mangekyou technique enveloped the first row. The waves drowned their screams quickly; the inflicted dropping the chakra at their feet a heartbeat after being hit. Even in the frothing sea nothing could be done to help them, and Itachi watched them die painful deaths. If only he had more chakra, he may have been able to escape without killing his pursuers. Guilt probed at his chest, but he could not afford to reflect, because the wrathful technique had not spread to the second row. Five last ninja, panic and rage in their eyes, had closed in on him. Through his haze of exhaustion they seemed to come at him in slow motion, circling him like hunters around a wounded beast, raising glinting steel from their packs.

Itachi's chest heaved. He fell to his knees. Wet heat dripped from his eye sockets into the black water between his knees. He might be able to kill more, but he certainly could not run. He could not even stand. Panic welled in his chest as he felt the waves encompassing his shins. The running, the sharingan, fireball, Tsukiyomi, Amaterasu, it had been too much. In trying to spare the lives of some enemies, he may have just ended his own. His calves slipped into the water, then his waist. Knowing what came next, Itachi gasped a deep breath.

It was numbly quiet, refreshingly still, while his body remained unpleasantly cold. He looked up, and the disorganized splashing footprints on the surface seemed silent and insignificant. Slow and inexorable his leaden robes dragged him to the earth's core. His heart hammered away his remaining oxygen. He had to get out of here. But his sharingan had faded and the watery world became icy and dark. He fought against the increasing numbness in his mind, his thoughts racing futile like ants trapped in a sap of hypoxia. He imagined two black eyes in front of him. _Sasuke? _He reached two fingers into the abyss.

* * *

**-Hoshigaki ******Kisame-**-**

Figures fell from the surface like twisting stones from the heavens. Most of them were not dead when they fell.

The nerves on his snout sensed a blizzard of electricity firing around him. Each movement by a living thing, each command from a brain to its muscles, enacted a tiny electric signal which Kisame could sense in this form. It was impossible to hide from him. Chaos had erupted and the mission was not proceeding to plan. But king in his domain, Kisame was calm.

A familiar sensation prickled along his shark snout. Changing directions with a wide sweep of his tail, Kisame arced towards a particular fallen ninja. He felt his lips twitch.

_Careful, Itachi. You are easy prey in the water._

The young raven had not fared well over the ocean. Itachi drifted some three meters below the surface, where the water was calm, and the gray light from the stormy sun was dull. The unconscious ninja floated mostly upright, with his chin tipped up. His long hair and robe were splayed behind him, with his arms spread like a martyr.

Catching the boy in the crook of his elbow, Kisame fired his tail. The long braid of muscle was magnificently more powerful than his legs when swimming. He dodged corpses, who, even underwater, fed black flames which warned a horrific static on his electroreceptors. The hellish chakra's flavor denoted familiarity, and Kisame's eyes slid to his passenger. Awarding the burning bodies a careful berth, Kisame steered away from the battlefield.

In a calm spot, Kisame lifted Itachi's head to the surface. The leaf ninja, though still unconscious, began to breathe again once his face was above water. Such a beautiful adaptation the Mammalian Diving Reflex was: unconscious humans breathe automatically when dry, but exhibit slowed heart rates and ceased breathing when their faces were wet.

Kisame observed the distant commotion. Ninja swarmed around the destroyed ship and fished civilians from the water. He was faintly aware of Kakuzu running off towards shore, felling pursuant ninja left and right, some twenty dead or dying in the water behind him. Deidara was dead or gone. He waited a moment at the surface, expecting Itachi to cough himself awake, but he did not. He took Itachi back under the water to swim covertly in the direction of land, surfacing for the benefit of his human cargo about twice every minute. Kisame had learned from drowning people in water prisons that seventy seconds was the threshold where a normal human would start to squirm. It amused him that today he used the knowledge to _prevent _someone from drowning.

His lessened visibility in the sandy water and the electric flickers of minnows and crabs indicated that he had neared shore, and rising to his human legs, Kisame stood erect and slogged into the surf. Itachi was draped at the waist over his shoulder and framed by his long dorsal fin. Kisame in this beastly form easily weighed seven hundred kilograms, with Itachi adding another sixty. His webbed feet sank heavily in the fine muddy sand that crowded at the roots of the mangrove shore.

Curling his claws into the back of Itachi's robe, Kisame swung the boy against the cagelike roots of a mangrove tree. Itachi looked like a waterlogged bird: small, delicate, with a weak bendy neck and thin limbs which were stupidly ill-fitted to the open ocean. His long dark brown hair had escaped its tie and hung limply around his face. It was much less dignified than the Uchiha prince's usual mien.

_We don't have to tell the others about this, eh?_

Kisame sat cross-legged to observe the boy and slung his fat tail out on the sand behind him. He had tasted little blood and saw no wounds. Was Itachi unconscious from the oxygen deprivation, or from the expenditure of chakra? If the former, he should be awake already. If the latter, it could be hours.

Lazily, Itachi's coal black eyes opened. Kisame stared into his eyes, expecting -_wanting_\- their stoic depths to spark in fear at the sight of him. But Itachi flipped himself forward onto his hands, coughed roughly, and proceeded to retch salt water.

Well, it looks like humans _mostly_ did not try to breathe underwater while unconscious.

On hands and knees, his back a concave arch, Itachi looked over his shoulder to stare at his hulking partner. "You're…. _Different_."

Kisame cracked a razor's smile. He could not speak in this form.

"Thank you, Kisame," Itachi said. "I am very lucky you found me."

Finding someone in the water was never the problem. The trouble was knowing to look for them at all. Fortunately, Itachi had a very identifiable presence, especially when he had incinerated half a dozen chakras in fire hellish enough to burn underwater.

"Would you have any fresh water?" Itachi asked.

Kisame's gear and pack were lost, he had not expected this mission to require transforming, but he had when he sensed the fighting. Kisame took a large leaf from a jungle tree, and with a simple jutsu he filled it with water and gave it to the seated Itachi. Itachi tipped the long leaf to his lips with both hands. He drank heartily, his adam's apple bobbing, and water dripped from his lips and trickled down his pale neck. Finished, he coughed lightly and pressed his lips dry with the back of his wrist. Kisame found the princely habit funny, because Itachi was still dripping everywhere else.

_Thudd._ A huge clay gull alighted on the muddy sand and Deidara strided down its sloping tail. He looked at the transformed Kisame, then at the washed-out Itachi, and back at Kisame. "What the _fuck _happened to you two?"

No one answered him. Itachi chose not to. Kisame had no choice.

Deidara shook his head. "Kakuzu's gonna roast me," Deidara muttered, contracting his bird back into a tiny clay piece.

"_I_ will roast you," Itachi corrected him. The fire-style ninja stood with sudden aggression. He grabbed Deidara by the chest of his robe and pulled him to face his eyes like an academy bully.

Odd for Itachi. Kisame swung his long head to his partner for explanation.

"The Raikage was on that ship. Deidara fled on his bird, leaving Kakuzu and I to deal with the troops and escape," Itachi explained.

Hm. Kisame turned menacingly to the Stone Ninja. Certainly a few people could have fit on that bird.

"Hey sheesh, I'm sorry. I got spooked." Deidara displayed his slit palms to Itachi in a leave-me-alone gesture.

"Those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum," Itachi warned him.

"_Comrades_? You think we're _comrades_ here?—" Deidara opened his mouth to laugh, but stopped abruptly. He froze under Itachi's now-red eyes, transfixed like a rabbit by a weasel.

"I'm sorry," Deidara whispered. Itachi released his robe and the other man retreated a step back.

A creaking and sloshing of sand arose from behind the mangroves. Deidara and Itachi tensed. But in this form Kisame could discern the old, earthy, angry chakra as familiar. A black corded monster, bearlike in shape with a folkish mask, loped from the roots alongside its master.

"Phew," Deidara sighed.

"Deidara," Kakuzu rumbled. "How old are you?"

"Uh, seventeen?"

Kakuzu absorbed the masked creature back into his body. But as he did, thin hairlike tentacles poured out from his stitched mouth like a lolling hungry tongue. He slurped them in before speaking again.

"Good. Young men's hearts are ideal."

Deidara looked at Itachi and Kisame for help. But Itachi, displeased, and Kisame, a giant semi-bipedal shark, offered the artist no reassurance. Fortunately, Kakuzu made no move to snatch the boy's heart just then.

Kisame decided this was a good time to transform back into Kisame the man. Or, Kisame the mostly-man. He extended his hand and Samehada's braided pommel appeared from his skin. The shark fins and tail receded, his spine shortened, and he stood erect and shirtless.

Kakuzu's eyes slid to him. "Neat trick. Where's your robe?"

"Lost it swimming," Kisame said, rolling his jaw as he talked to reaccustom himself to speaking. Really, his dorsal fin had shredded the robe the moment he transformed. Looking down, he was very pleased that his pants avoided the same fate.

"We need to head inland," Kakuzu said, and disappeared into the mangroves without waiting for responses.

Kisame's eyes slid to Itachi, wondering if the boy was yet capable of running. But sinking his chin into his collar, Itachi voiced no complaint, and he fell into step with the fleet.

* * *

**-Uchiha Itachi-**

Itachi was exhausted. He expected in a few minutes he may even collapse. Every once in a while Kisame might cast an appraising look at him, maybe his predator eyes smiled as if to say, 'you still alive?' Or maybe he imagined it. But after Kisame had dragged him out of the surf, Itachi refused to be the one to call for a stop. Night was falling, and soon enough, the others would not be able to see.

As he watched the backsides of Deidara and Kakuzu leap in front of him, he thought about the Akatsuki's flight from the ocean scene. If Deidara had not flown off like a coward, Itachi would not have had to kill those ninja today. Itachi had killed his clan, and multiple insurgents during his time in the Anbu, but each of those deaths had a greater purpose in protecting the Leaf. Today, he killed state ninja who acted in self defense. If he had been stronger, more enduring, he could have managed an escape with no unnecessary lethal measures. He looked at the old man running in front of him. In the same flight, Kakuzu had probably killed twenty people to his five.

Deidara broke the silence of their run. "Hey, uh, we wanna camp for the night?"

The four ninja halted. The elevation had increased enough that the mangroves were gone, replaced with a cold rainforest. In a quick survey of their surroundings, the men found a flat dry hollow between the dense trees large enough for four people.

"Should we build a fire?" Deidara suggested.

"It's not safe to," Itachi said.

"Sorry, I'm fucking freezing." Deidara revealed a piece of clay and blew a crater in the ground about a meter deep and around to hide a fire's light.

He gestured again at Itachi to light a fire. Itachi made no motion to comply. With a _hmmpf,_ Deidara gathered a few branches, turf, threw them down his pit, and flicked an explosive spider the size of a marble into it. Clumsy flames coughed out of the pit. Then the blond teen busily set out finding and tossing in more poor quality wet fuel from their immediate surroundings.

Kakuzu sat next to Deidara's sunken campfire, mumbling something that they should keep it for an hour. Kisame, Deidara, and at last Itachi followed. Everyone was cold, soaked, and morale was low - perhaps the fire was not unwarranted. The four men shed what outerwear they had to dry, and crouched around the sunken fire in their underwear.

Itachi's companions looked smooth and sinister in the low, warm light. Kakuzu's skin was tan, thick, and fractured with stitching scars. Four masks peered out from his back, of which one was now punctured. Deidara's left pectoralis had a slit of what might have been an additional mouth. Kisame looked enough like a human except for the blueish skin and the gill patterns. Itachi looked down at himself. Besides a red Anbu tattoo on his shoulder, he was completely unremarkable.

They had some onigiri in Kakuzu's pack, which were by now, also thoroughly soaked. Itachi set an array of the eight rice balls on a banana leaf next to the fire.

"I'll find some meat," Kisame said, and the Mist Ninja stalked out into the blackness. But after twenty minutes in the dark, the man had only managed to locate one small fish. He presented it to Itachi, who as the group's expert with knives, cleaned it adroitly with a kunai. He slit the pink fillet into four delicate equal slices. He placed one piece next to each member's two allotted onigiri, which by the fire had become hot and crispy. Itachi set the offal on a leaf should Kisame want it. It was gone the next time he thought to look for it.

The men sat with a tangle of legs towards the fire. Kisame crouched, Kakuzu was cross-legged, and Deidara's legs were folded up beside him. They each ate with different manners too: Itachi was the most civil, and Kisame the least.

Deidara placed his ration of fish on his tongue and asked, "Do you ever feel bad eating fish, Kisame?"

"Do you feel bad eating pigs?"

"No."

Kisame showed his teeth. "People like you kind of look like pigs to me."

Deidara narrowed his eyes. He went back to poking the fire with a stick and sculpting a new creature, maybe a crocodile.

"Four mysterious ninja sit around a fire," Kisame announced in his rough voice. As with Orochimaru's, Itachi could not decide if it was threatening or friendly. "We should get to know each other better. We can make it a _game_."

"No, we should _sleep_ _now_ and reach the Frost Border as early as possible tomorrow," Kakuzu said.

Deidara ignored Kakuzu and looked back to the group's other talkative member. "Alright, Kisame, here's a question: when you turn into a giant shark, have you ever eaten a person before?"

"Define 'eat.'"

"_Kisame..."_

"I've bitten hunks from plenty. I haven't swallowed any parts though… I don't think."

"How do people taste?"

"Not particularly good. Our low fat and protein content isn't worth the energy to digest for cold blooded creatures. Therefore only starving, open-ocean sharks enjoy a meal of men."

Kisame tightened his lips to show his whitish gums, and held a finger to where his canine tooth should have been. "Sharks can measure these things with one bite. There are specialized nerves next to our teeth that help us discern if a meal is nutritionally valuable, you see."

Deidara, bewildered, did not ask any more questions. Kisame, having served his part in the game, traced his pinprick eyes to Kakuzu. "A little bird told me you killed two of your partners."

"They live on." Kakuzu gestured to the water and lightning masks on his chest. "Good hearts."

Itachi wondered what would happen if Kakuzu transplanted an immortal heart like Hidan's. Certainly the rogue had considered the possibility.

"Gods, you're all cannibals," Deidara muttered.

_Cannibals?_ Itachi evaluated the word. Kisame tasted human flesh. Kakuzu took his partners' hearts. Deidara abandoned his comrades as bait. Itachi killed his family. They were no more than a band of leeches, gorging themselves on the blood of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Cannibals indeed.

Deidara stared at Itachi. "I got one: Itachi, how old were you when you killed your clan and joined the Akatsuki?"

"Fourteen."

"Were you a virgin when you did it?"

Itachi chewed his rice ball slowly. He did not answer.

Kakuzu interrupted. "How's it feel to suck yourself off with your own hands, Deidara?"

"Fucking divine!" The teen grinned and stretched out his arms to display the slurping tongues on his palms. Kisame guffawed and Kakuzu smirked. Itachi looked down, unable to hide a small smile.

Deidara yawned, and the mouths on his palms yawned too. He shrugged into his firewarmed robe and lounged cattishly on the earth, pillowing his head with an arm, and sighed satisfactorly. "Well, g'night, my murderous gents. Good job surviving today."

Irritation flared up in Itachi at the sight of Deidara's comfort. Thanks to him, only two hours ago Itachi had stared down the Raikage. "You're not sleeping on the ground."

Deidara's blue eyes flashed. "Stone Ninja, _sleeping in trees_? Yeah, right!"

"We should set a watch. We may have been followed," Itachi said.

"I'll do it, I have the most chakra left," Kisame said.

Kakuzu nodded. "Wake someone in a few hours."

The fire's light was out, but the earth and coals still radiated heat. Itachi dressed himself in his hot robe. He rose from the firewarmed earth, pinned his gaze on an arch in the tree above him, and tensed to jump.

A heavy weight on his shoulder halted his step.

"Maybe it's best for us all that you get a good rest," Kisame said, with a hand on his shoulder. Itachi stilled. He owed Kisame some heed after his help today. Itachi's presence on the ground was no further risk if Deidara and Kakuzu already insisted on sleeping there, and Kisame would watch well. Hesitant to indulge himself so freely, Itachi slowly laid himself back on a warm spot of earth.

He, Deidara, and Kakuzu arranged themselves in a lopsided triangle around the warm pit. Hooked in a loose Z, Itachi placed an arm under his head, curled his fingers into his thin hair, and tried to welcome the numb embrace of sleep. Past him, Kisame perched in the tree, one leg bent, the other hanging. His eyes swept down at his teammates, then stared out into the darkness. Itachi heard him crunching on a bone.

* * *

**Author's Note;**

Thanks again to beta myochiikurin! Any typos you find are due to my own overzealous editing ;)

The % complete of the next chapter is always posted on my account profile. Thanks for reading, and I hope you stick around! And maybe let me know what you liked in a review?

Steadfast,

Kelto


	3. Chapter 3: The Lineage of Izanagi

**-Uchiha Itachi-**

Something particularly loveless prodded Itachi awake.

"You're the last watch till dawn," Kakuzu said. Itachi activated his sharingan as he woke, his dark eyes shifting to red. He could see Kakuzu's green ones were dilated near-sightlessly in the blackness.

Itachi rose and leapt up their chosen watchman's tree. The sharingan allowed him to see a wider spectrum of visible light than a normal human, and what should have been the black jungle night gained a strange ultraviolet tinge, a whitish-purple color somewhere between neon and dark that his language could not well describe. The stars and chakras shined different, coldly-bright, minty colors too. But he saw no glows of enemy shinobi in the night, just the gentle silver chakra silhouettes of sleeping birds and insects, and the three ninja below him. He let his sharingan fade. In an hour it had become bright enough for ordinary humans to see.

He alighted between the three ninja sleeping on the ground to no response. So much for Kisame's 'I only half sleep' claim.

Unsure of the best way to wake them, Itachi announced at normal volume, "It's dawn."

They rose quickly and quietly, professional in every mercenary sense of the word. For a troupe of cantankerous rogues, Itachi was surprised no one complained. He supposed that would resume once they decided they were no longer being hunted.

"No sign of the enemy since I've been awake," Itachi reported.

"Time to get the hell out of the land of Lightning. Anyone gotta take a piss, now's the time," Kakuzu said. After a short moment, the four ninja oriented themselves against the eastern dawn, and began leaping through the trees.

"Where's Zetsu when you need him?" Deidara muttered as they ran. "He'd say what Pain wants us to do about this."

"You don't need Pain or his pet mushroom. You have _me_," Kakuzu said.

"Yeah? And who made _you_ second in command?"

"I'm the one who actually _talks _with our contractors. So naturally, I have our mission intel, and there's no reason to stop work."

"Hmpf," Deidara said.

"Since you fucked up the least, Kisame, I'll let you pick what you do." Kakuzu said. "You want to fix this Raikage incident, or make some money?"

Kisame looked at Itachi for his opinion. Itachi merely raised his eyebrows in reply.

"Make money," Kisame answered. Good. Itachi wanted to be away from this disaster.

"Great. You two go to this shithole village and kill their patriarch. When you're done with that, some pirates could use a lesson in not leaving witnesses." Kakuzu tossed a scroll to Kisame and one to Itachi, who each caught them deftly. Kakuzu then looked at Deidara.

"Deidara, you and Sasori will fix your fuck up. We don't want the Cloud or Mist investigating the Akatsuki. Blame it on different terrorists."

"How do we do that?"

"Doesn't matter," Kakuzu said.

Deidara frowned. But his calmness suggested he thought Sasori would know how to fix it.

They were soon over the border of the Land of Frost, where they said the brief goodbyes of stiff men. Itachi and Kisame continued west. Deidara went north. Kakuzu south. They stopped at a collection point on the way to get Kisame a new robe and gear, and began their ascent to the next mission's village in the afternoon.

They stopped along a river to prepare. The mint-colored alpine meltwater cooled the air in a low dense pocket from the beating sun. Itachi opened the scroll of mission intel and familiarized himself with the details. "Small town. Better we don't make a stir."

Kisame grunted in acknowledgement and stepped towards the river, swinging Samehada off his shoulder. He summoned a large deep-blue shark along the bank. It opened its mouth, and Kisame pressed the wrapped Samehada inside its white-fleshed throat. The two ninja being armed to the teeth was useful for intimidation, but a hindrance to infiltration. As if it was a loyal horse, Kisame patted the magical shark once on the muzzle once it closed its jaws around Samehada.

"You ever touch a shark before, Itachi? Try it."

Like he had been invited to partake in the most dangerous petting zoo, Itachi wet his feet at the bank where the shark, high as his hips, swayed half submerged. He thought the shark would look at him, or at least acknowledge him, but its circular black eyes didn't waver. With a slowness Itachi hoped the fish would interpret as respect, he brushed his palm against its exposed gray flank.

"It feels like sandpaper."

Kisame smiled. "Shark skin is actually made of dentin, the same material as teeth."

_Because they need more of that,_ Itachi thought. He removed his hand, and deeming its duty done, the huge probably-sentient carnivore disappeared with a puff of mist to the realm Kisame had summoned it from.

"It's not easy to make a summoning contract with a shark, you know. Ninja tend to not come back," Kisame said.

"I thought you said sharks don't like how people taste."

"Oh, the sage sharks of Koraru Depths make exceptions for arrogant Mist chunin. You don't taste _that_ bad."

He sent Kisame a reproachful look at his choice of pronouns, but Itachi's face was something of a resting scowl, so Kisame seemed not to notice.

To appear like a traveler of the civilian sort, Itachi untied his shuriken packs and the ninja headband. They kept their robes, no one yet recognized the red clouds as unique. He thought living in the forest on the run gave him enough of a convincingly rough appearance. Lifting his gaze from the water's reflection, he regarded his partner.

"Do I pass for a trader?"

"You _look_ fine. It's your voice that's the problem."

"My voice?"

"I don't know how much you know about the Hidden Mist, but there we have a caste system, and the Hoshigaki belong to a certain caste. And people like me can tell by your dialect, Itachi, that you come from a noble family, and there's not a chance in hell you're a traveling merchant."

Itachi never thought of himself as in an upper class, and caste had been abolished in his land seventy years ago. Kisame's background in the Mist allowed him to perceive things that Itachi never intended to exude. "I see."

"Try _gotcha, _instead of _I see._"

"Gotcha."

Itachi pulled a piece of paper from the scroll and unfolded its careful nine-faceted square. A sketch of the man they were paid to kill stared back at them. Taika Hiroki. About sixty years old, leader of the local clan, someone had it out for him. Kisame nodded, having committed his face a last time to memory. Itachi burned the incriminating documents between his fingers.

The pair climbed ancient stairs carved from wood, stone, and roots, along a humid forested mountain crest. Traditional torii winged gates arched over their heads, and the small village soon appeared along a glacial lake between the mountains. A chunin posted at the doorless entrance looked the two travelers up and down. He pulled a root of wild licorice from his teeth before he spoke.

"What brings you to Honomura?"

"We're merchants," Kisame said.

"Here for the festival?"

"Of course."

The guard escorted them in. A minor official who clearly did not get enough visitors gave them each wooden travelers' passes. What a bothersome village.

Itachi felt more endangered in these hamlets. He paradoxically would be less noticed in a large ninja village. It was in these tribal redoubts, where most of the settlement consisted of a single clan, that he knew he was immediately recognized as an outsider. By the introductions they made with petty officials, the pair gleaned that three quarters of the settlement's two-hundred-odd population had the surname Taika, and it would not be easy to find theirs.

But the presence of the foreigners attracted mercifully little attention at the festival. Like moths drawn to the warm haze of paper lanterns, the outlaw pair wandered dazed to the center of the fairgrounds. After weeks in the forest they were transfixed by the live music, the vendors, and best, the greasy scent of real food -not whole animals- which glistened with salt and sauce. They looked at each other with testing eyes that betrayed the same poorly concealed thought.

"How much money do we have," Itachi said.

Kisame checked himself. "I've got eight hundred."

"I have one thousand."

Crap.

"I'll find some more money," Kisame said. Good. They were on the same line of the same page. In less than two minutes, Kisame had stolen a two centimeter wad of cash from a food stand.

Itachi's eyes darted from stand to stand. "What do you want to eat?"

"Do I look picky to you?"

Bristling with treasures —foods on sticks and cups of tea and sake between their knuckles— Itachi and Kisame seated themselves at one of many low tables near the town's stage and began to eat. Soon enough an announcer entered stage center, and introduced an act on the origin of deities.

"How's your knowledge of religion, Itachi?"

"Average."

The play began as they ate, and rusted to art forms, Itachi found himself paying rapt attention. Two actors dressed in white robes, a woman and a spear-wielding man, stepped onto the stage, where white lanterns cast the empty scene in an ethereal fog. Dipping his spear into the water, or rather tapping the stage floor, the man created land, and the white-clouded lanterns slid on the string to be replaced with ones tinted a jungle green.

"Izanami and Izanagi," Itachi whispered to Kisame. "Siblings, but also..." he waved his hand in esoteric explanation.

The creation gods Izanami and Izanagi had several deformed and normative children. First born was Hiruko, stricken with a hunched back, and cast into a river. They had many others, at last birthing Kagutsuchi the fire god. Izanami died giving birth to the flaming infant.

"_And with Izanami's end, the world's first death occurred, and with it the age of creation. Intent to amend his wife's unjust fate, Izanagi plunged into the underworld, which then, was not separated from the realm of men," _the narrator read.

Izanami wandered through a darkened stage, and stopped short. Behind a veil shined the unmistakable silhouette of his beloved wife.

The curtain lifted, but the woman it revealed was not fair Izanami. The actress's serene white face-paint had become putrefied in death. Children's gasps accented the moment. Fingers curled in shock at his rancid beloved, Izanagi turned away. His wife was enraged at his superficial rejection, and spurred demons after her former lover. Izanagi raced from the underworld, off the stage, where demons in fur-rimmed masks chased him through the audience until Izanagi circled, panting but safe, back onto the stage of the surface world. He pushed a prop-boulder over the cave, forever sealing life from death.

The narrator stepped onto the stage, and a spotlight centered on him, with Izanagi bathing himself in background.

"_Izanagi cleansed himself from the underworld in a rushing river. The water that streamed off his face became three new gods:" _

The spotlight jumped to greet the new characters in regal dress:

"_From one eye sprung the proud moon god, Tsukuyomi." _

"_From the nose, the mischievous god of sea and storm, Susanoo." _

"_And from the other eye, artful and enlightened, patron of our village: Amaterasu the sun." _

"Amaterasu was by far the most righteous and beautiful of the three new gods," the narrator crooned, and stooped low to leer at her backside. Amaterasu raised her fan to her face, whumphing the announcer without a lapse in grace, and the audience laughed.

The three new gods greeted the world of men -the audience- each with kabuki flourishes that reflected their personalities. He thought Amaterasu made eye contact with him from behind her fan.

"Hm." Kisame smiled slightly and his pupils slid to Itachi.

Itachi sipped his tea. "We might be the most interesting thing that blew into this town in a week."

"You should talk with her."

"I'm not good at flirting."

Kisame snorted. "Just like your knowledge of religion."

"I'm not being modest. I haven't spoken with a girl my age in years. In this town, I'm just a merchant."

"A kind, handsome one."

Itachi was struck that Kisame had called him 'kind.' He did not think Kisame would evaluate someone with that category. Not knowing how to take the compliment, Itachi stared back at the stage. Amaterasu and Susanoo competed over who was a stronger god. Amaterasu had just turned Susanoo's sword into five human beings, versus Susanoo's ability to spring only three from her necklace.

Their low table quaked. Kisame had plunged his cup down so hard and fast that his drink sloshed over the rim. His wide nose wrinkled and the stare Itachi met was battle-urgent.

"There's blood, buckets of it, enough to drain ten men."

Itachi forced his shoulders to relax. They must not act or show awareness of this yet. His eyes scanned the crowd as a cheering arose and the taiko drums beat an excited sinister trot into the space between his ribs. A column of fifteen men and boys carved a path like a wild river through the parade grounds, a coarse wooden platform undulating on the men's shoulders. Atop it glistened a bleeding heap of fresh red muscles and white fascia. It was a dead, skinned, horse.

Kisame squinted. "What the _hell?_"

"The crimes of Susanoo. Upset with his sister, he flayed the skin off Amaterasu's horse," Itachi explained. He also noted that in these conditions, Kisame could not differentiate human from animal blood.

Susanoo charmingly presented Amaterasu the horse carcass from the audience. Amaterasu strode off the stage in grief and anger, her silken white-red sleeves snapping, and the stage darkened with the egress of the dawn goddess, plunging the realm of men into darkness. Susanoo smirked and laughed, and the loping demons in fur-rimed masks began to howl. String instruments climaxed crescendo and fell, marking the end of the play's chapter. The audience gasped and clapped. The festival night was now without the Sun's guidance, and any kind of crookedness could occur before dawn returned.

The men heaped the horse onto a pyre, and a chunin lit it with a fire jutsu, enflaming a birchwood pile which was small enough that the meat might be cooked rather than carbonized. The village had a dark interpretation of their worship: Itachi thought that the goddess Amaterasu would not appreciate the flaying of another horse in her name. But the villagers seemed to like it.

"The Leaders of the Mist would consider this barbaric," Kisame said, his sly eyes smiling behind his cup.

Itachi matched Kisame's sentiment. No, the great ninja villages did not sacrifice simple horses to gods of sun, but sacrificed men and souls to gods of war. Gods they hailed each time they smithed a kunai, and who licked their lips at each newborn baby.

The next performance started, some students playing taiko drums. It was a banal sight compared to the play. Itachi ate his dango and drank his tea, listened to the music, and watched thick smoke rise from the pyre.

A gang of the village's teens stood by the pyre, the actress for Amaterasu among them. She had removed the headdress and white facepaint, but she still wore Amaterasu's red and white wake-sleeved furisode. One of the group looked at him and Kisame and giggled, as if discussing a dare. Then Amaterasu looked at the two travelers and grabbed a tray. He realized with a start that she was coming towards them. Kisame, who smelled caste like he smelled blood, tugged Itachi's robe, telling him that this is when merchants stood.

She dipped her head in greeting. "Excuse me sirs, my name is Taika Hato. I'm priestess at our temple and actress at the theater. We noticed you're not from around here. Would you like some horse flesh?"

Itachi blinked: the sun goddess Amaterasu had just offered him to eat her horse. He stumbled out a yes.

"And you, sir?"

"Please give me the shoulder, Miss Hato."

"Sure. May I ask your names?"

'Itachi' meant weasel. Weasels were small, ambitious, mean, and hungry. His parents' birth judgement had been imperfect: Itachi had become a man who was calm, sharp, and observant.

"I am Karasu. And this is my companion, Mekajiki. It's very good to meet you, and thank you for the food." Itachi bowed his head and gave himself a name meaning crow, and swordfish for Kisame.

"You're welcome! How was the show?"

"Your performance was stirring. I only hope your next act is soon: if I remember, demons terrorize everyone on earth until Amaterasu comes back," he said, trying his best to exude friendliness, but he had not spoken to anyone he considered a friend in years. He sat down, and with a gesture to the empty space, he invited Hato to join them if she wanted. He noticed Kisame's chin dip near-imperceptibly in approval of his manners.

"You know your religion," she said, taking a seat. "Stick around tomorrow at seven to see me kick Susanoo's butt. What brings you two here?"

"You mean, you can't tell by our dress?" Itachi asked.

"It _is _odd," she agreed.

Itachi smiled. "We're charcoal burners."

"So you...?"

"We fell trees, burn the logs in an earthen kiln using fire and water style, and then travel from village to village selling the charcoal. Smiths burn it to keep their forges at the correct temperature. It's also used in cooking, fertilizer, detergent, explosives, traditional medicine- even cosmetics. We've got a wagon full of it down the road."

Her look between the two men deduced Itachi was the fire user. "How good is your fire style?"

"Just the basics," he said modestly.

Hato's eyes changed from simply friendly to that of intrigue, and her expression became appraising and hopeful. "For the last act, the village guards cast fire jutsus as tributes to Amaterasu. You should join them."

"I couldn't possibly intrude on your ceremony as an outsider."

"When it comes to this ceremony, I am the authority. Plus, gifts from strangers mean more than gifts from friends, we say."

Itachi nodded. He would make an offering of flame to Amaterasu. And the girl, her representative, smiled with her eyes. "Thank you, Karasu! They'll love it."

Kisame stretched, looked at the two youths, and stood to leave. His gaze alerted Itachi not to expect his return. "I'm going to… get some more sake."

"You don't want to watch your friend perform?" Hato asked.

Kisame grinned and waved. "He's not so impressive."

Hato led Itachi backstage to meet the village's top military brass: a gaggle of four men spanning years fifteen to thirty who passed a ceramic bottle between them. The root-chewing gatekeeper was youngest among them. Hato was received warmly by the soldiers. She introduced Itachi as a pious charcoal merchant, and he was quickly ignored by the men.

For this dangerous and final act of the night, the stage had been stripped bare of its curtains and paper lanterns, and strapping men spilled buckets of water across the hardwood stage. A grinning bucket-spiller splashed the remaining water dregs onto the squealing children in the front row. From the backstage tent, Itachi watched the first four performers submit their offerings, each casting the biggest sun he could into the night sky in honor of Amaterasu. The crowd shrieked and laughed, fire reflecting on their wide scleras. Stepping forward for his turn, Itachi decided he would create a fireball that was the third largest- no need to upstage the locals.

Itachi mounted the stage as the penultimate performer left. His eye caught on Hato staring at him encouragingly, she flashed a thumbs-up, and he was bolstered with a better idea. Halting just one step onto the stage, Itachi faced profile, and his chest swelled like a bird. He blew, and his fire bloomed a deep ferrous red sparking with trace elements, and the chakra fireball sprinted across the stage in the shape of a stallion. Mane flaring, embers sparking from its light hooves, the fleet, shrieking horse appeared and faded in a vacuum roar. He returned backstage to raucous applause. When the soldiers' mouths gaped wide enough to catch frogs, a quiet grin cut Itachi's lips.

_It hadn't been larger than yours,_ he thought.

Hato linked arms with him and led him through the festival crowds. She would introduce him to people and he would forget their names. Villagers welcomed him like a hero and plied him with sake. A kind old lady handed him a skewer with cubes of horseflesh. Any friend of Amaterasu was a friend of theirs. He was happy. Kisame was gone, the mission was something for tomorrow, Hato was a nice girl, and he could pretend to be normal for a night. Her attention made him feel pleasantly male, that he wasn't strange, isolated, murderous or evil.

She had showed him around the small town and they found themselves walking along the cold, white-graveled shores of the glacier lake. The gentle summer alpine night glowed cobalt blue, lightened by a huge low moon, whose coolness was relieving compared to the warm and dark frenzy of the blood festival.

"Actress and priestess," Itachi said as they strolled. "One's devout, and old people would say the other is sinful. I haven't met a person who's been both."

She smiled. "Each coin has two sides, and the same goes for you. Where'd a merchant learn ninjutsu like that?"

"The road is dangerous… and," he whispered like sharing a secret, "Sometimes really boring."

"Hah! Can't be less interesting than here."

"Did you know, that was a curse you'd tell your enemies in the old days? '_May you live in interesting times'_?"

"Sounds menacing when you say it. Can you do other ninja tricks?"

In a heartbeat, he threw three kunai in a perfect line along a slender birch, each resonating a deep thunk that merged into one. A white and gold moth fluttered impaled on the center knife. She gasped.

But when he looked back at her, her face seemed uncomfortable. The throw was well above chunin level, above most jounin. Itachi knew he should not be careless in his desire to impress her by throwing beyond the abilities of a merchant. But somehow, the throw had not pleased her.

"Is something wrong, Hato?"

"What I liked about your fire jutsu wasn't its killing power; it wasn't a weapon, it was _art_."

"Art..."

"It's like how you and Mekajiki use fire and water style to make charcoal. Your fire style painted Amaterasu's horse, and it was beautiful. Performance is art, and it makes people happy."

Itachi regurgitated what he knew of art. "Do you think art is a single rapturous instant, or eternal?"

"Weird question. Art isn't a period of time, but a place. It transports you somewhere you've never been before, to some feeling you've never felt before"

"Hm," Itachi pondered. He thought that was a better philosophy than that of either Deidara or Sasori. He wondered how mad they would be if he answered like that, and decided he would next time they asked his opinion. Which would probably be never.

She smiled at him. "I've got a stupid dream. Wanna hear it?"

"I'd love to."

"I dream to lead a group someday that practices more peaceful uses to ninjutsu than war. Even if it was just a traveling circus of theater artists, and all we accomplished was making some villagers laugh."

"You've already got a talent for performance. The road is dangerous, but train and surround yourself with others like you, and only a fool would rob you."

She smiled sadly. "Dad wants me to marry a prince in the next village."

"Bring the prince along."

The actress said nothing and skipped a stone over the lake. It failed after two stops, and she made a noise of embarrassment. Itachi picked up a small flat stone and also skipped it badly. Ripples in the lake reflected the moonbeams like bobbing driftwood.

"It's late," Itachi said after a while.

"Do you have somewhere to stay?"

Itachi did not answer right away. She said, "Stay the night at my house."

Itachi bowed. "That's very generous of you. I would be happy to stay overnight in your stable, and my partner as well, if possible."

There was a sly shift of her eyes, lids heavy around her big, black pupils. "I think he'll have found an inn by now. But that shouldn't stop you."

Hato escorted him across flagstones that shone silver in the moonlight. Carrying their shoes, opening a sliding door with the utmost care, the two tiptoeing teens entered her sub-clan's complex and slipped into her bedroom.

Itachi set his shoes along the wall, wondering to what extent he should undress himself. When he turned around, Hato had knelt on her white futon. With her eyes trained at him, she slowly loosened the belt of her furisode to bare her chest. Itachi did the same. He reached to kiss her, she kissed him back. He shed the rest of his clothes, then did the same for her. He leaned into her. This is what people did.

He shuddered at the unfamiliarity when her weak hands touched his neck, they were warm and soft, hot as death-blood. He banished the rising memories, memories from the last time he did this, no, from the last time he _thought_ he did this with Izumi that terrible night. Their bodies fit together like hot white ivory, and like smoke and steam, a very un-normal man tried his best to do this very normal thing.

* * *

_**Author's Note;**_

Heyo, thanks for supporting this fic. I plan to post chapter 4 on Friday.

Let me know your thoughts. And thanks of course to thanks again to beta myochiikurin!

Steadfast,

Kelto


	4. Chapter 4: Slaughter's Court

**-Uchiha Itachi-**

Ironic, that he had been interested by an actress. It was an art he sympathized with; his whole life was an act. As he lay in her bed that morning, his fingers in her black hair, a peculiar thought struck him.

What if he just _stayed_.

Hato was exciting and kind, the sex was good, and maybe someday he would love her, or someone like her. He wasn't undeserving of love. He killed his clan, at least sixty individuals himself, but not because he wanted to. Itachi thought he deserved love.

Kisame would understand if he at one point explained wanting to stay. He would keep quiet in front of Pain and Madara. Or not, and Itachi could fake his death. Or not, and he could kill Kisame.

He dispelled the fantasy. He couldn't _actually_ flee the Akatsuki. Madara would kill him, and if Itachi died prematurely, Sasuke could not redeem the clan's sins and abolish the cycle of hatred. It was Itachi's duty to be raise himself like a sow for slaughter, and he had accepted his fate the moment he raised a sword to his family. He accepted his fate...

Hato slept on and he did not wish to disturb her. Itachi rose, quietly put on his pants, and stole through the living room and into their courtyard. He didn't want to run into any family members while looking for a bathroom, he didn't think they even _had_ bathrooms here, so once outside, he watchfully pissed on a tree. He remembered passing a water pump the night before which had showed signs of regular use. Finding it, he pumped the handle to coax a silvery vein of chilled water, which pooled between his spaded fingers, and trickled cold as a winter stone down his throat. With his wet hands he rinsed his sweat-salted face and hair, and the water on his lips tasted like birch smoke, horse grease, and Hato.

When he stepped to open the sliding door, he sensed another human presence had moved inside. He supposed he had been lucky to not confront a family member for this long. But Itachi feared no strict parents, and decided to go in anyway. A man painted a landscape with a slender brush at the table. Fair chance he was her father.

The older man lifted his eyes from the paper in a motion intended to induce intimidation. "Did you have fun with Hato last night?"

Itachi said nothing. The man's tone, well rehearsed, changed then.

"I know you," he said.

_Yes,_ Itachi thought. _I know you too._

"Uchiha Itachi."

"Taika Hiroki."

"I spent six years dismantling the trade of poppy milk in this village. I suppose you're here to kill me."

"Yes."

"Well," the old man smiled and rose from the chair. "I guess we better get started."

He pulled a ceremonial katana from the wall and in a fluid motion swung it to cleave between Itachi's neck and shoulder. His wise eyes stared only at the Uchiha's feet.

Itachi was half dressed, wore no shoes, carried no gear or weapons. He would not beat this man to death with his bare hands while half naked in his own home. Sliding on the wood, he came back in the bedroom and saw Hato had dressed and was tying her hair. She smiled when she saw him.

Itachi seized his belongings and slung on his clouded robe without a word. A katana in the doorframe announced the elder Taika's arrival.

Hato stood. "Papa, stop!"

"He's Rika's assassin, Hato!"

Itachi did not want to watch her face. He ran back into the house, out into the courtyard, where Taika followed him. The patriarch slashed his blade, Itachi blocked it with a kunai, and a clear sparking _ching! _awoke the household.

Itachi threw a kunai behind him, and for an instinctive second Taika reacted to this strangeness by looking at Itachi's eyes. The fight ended then. His genjutsu could drop an untrained civilian unconscious with eye-contact. It was as simple as altering the chakra flow to the hypothalamus. As the father's knees buckled, Itachi caught a thought directed at him.

_Put the wounds in the front, may She not think, I died running._

Taika Hiroki slumped to the grass of their garden. Itachi had struck him unconscious with a gaze, but the rest would have to be done physically. He picked up the old man and drew a fatal slash through his jugular.

He heard a creak. He swung his head towards the noise, and Hato flinched. She stared with wide eyes from a doorway, and she gingerly held the discarded kunai. He wished that she would just run away.

He stood over the corpse. "My name is Uchiha Itachi, Scourge of the Leaf, and I was contracted to kill your father."

"Did you plan to use me the whole time?"

"No. You were the kindest anyone has been to me in years, Hato."

Her gaze was not sorrowful. It was not hate. It was an ice-cold shocked fear of the betrayed that knew it stared a devil in the face, and that no measure of piety could save it.

Itachi knew he was beyond forgiveness, apology, and redemption. But he faced Hato, looked her in the eyes, and for three vulnerable seconds, he bowed low.

When she stabbed the kunai towards his head, he flickered away to the roof that ringed the courtyard. From the vantage he observed the priestess drop the clattering knife in the blood, fall to her knees, and weep at her father's corpse.

He heard the ceramic roof tiles clatter next to him. The four fire-breathing chunin from the play had arrived. Standing in a square around him, they parsed clumsy signs and raised trembling fingers to their lips. Itachi clutched his kunai. In that moment, the entire military might of Honomura was extinguished. From the corner of his eye, in the viscous creek of red which tumbled down the curved tiles, the final synapses of a dying white hand twitched their last.

From his position on the house's eaves, Itachi felt eyes on him from the street, and he knew who it was. Itachi alighted beside his partner, who grinned his monstrous teeth at a job completed. They turned their backs, their red clouded robes rippled, and they left the village quicker than most people could see. The wind snapped cold on Itachi's arms: they were cloaked to the elbow in blood.

He contemplated his actions as he plunged through the trees. Not once had Itachi questioned the order once the attack began. He had decided it necessary and functioned on the assumption that Taika must be killed. A holdover from his Anbu days, he thought.

He followed orders in the Anbu to serve his village. He killed the Uchiha to save the world. But _this_, why did he kill _this _man? Why kill his harmless guards? Itachi thought his grasp on the concept of morality was cracking, and soon enough, he would kill anyone with ease. He realized he was underway to becoming like the true killers of the Akatsuki. Not zealous and purposed like Hidan, but something worse: cold, bored, and unflinching, like Kakuzu, Sasori, and Kisame.

Itachi had slept with this girl, and not ten hours later he had unflinchingly destroyed her life. The Scourge of the Leaf was no longer convinced of the pure selflessness of his martyrdom.

He considered the mathematics. Employed like this, over five years he may kill two hundred innocents so he could stay alive long enough for Sasuke to kill him. But the Uchiha's honor was a poisonous, racial, militant, radicalism which he hated. His family's hubris was the only worthwhile thing about them he had killed. The world was not better off if Sasuke rekindled the cursed Uchiha honor. And if that rekindling was not necessary, Itachi did not need to raise himself as a black sow for Sasuke to slaughter. He, Kisame, the Akatsuki, would make the world worse, and perhaps the noblest course of action was to remove these evils from the equation directly.

He thought about Shisui. He would be approaching his late friend's age soon. Shisui had failed to think of a way outside the ethical predicament of his being alive, and solved it in the most desperate way he knew.

The wind shrieked cold on his bloody arms. The dead Taika smiled from his memory. '_Well, let's get started then_.'

* * *

**\- Hoshigaki Kisame-**

They had lit no fire. Itachi said it was not safe. It was notable to Kisame, that the only ninja in the Akatsuki who could drop an enemy by looking at them, was insistent about remaining unseen.

Kisame had stolen supplies from the festival on their flight from the village. Some food and drink, but most importantly cloth and paper, which were highly life-improving materials for camping. Deep in the mountain crests some twenty kilometers from the village, Itachi had professed he must wash himself, and had stopped the pair for the night at a creek.

They settled down to rest around their nonexistent fire and organized their new and old belongings. Kisame cut the stolen white cloth into a long strip for Samehada, and with the scraps Itachi made bandage sized strips. The young man looked deep in melancholy thought as he worked, and at a particular moment, sighed frustrated.

"Aw," Kisame teased. "Itachi is having girl problems."

"Kisame, I ruined her life."

"Sorry," Kisame retracted. "Do you want more food, sake, or what?"

"None of these things would make me feel better."

Kisame poured a small serving of sake into the abstemious Itachi's bamboo. "Then let's talk."

"Do you ever contemplate the point of people like us existing, if we only make the world worse?"

Kisame knew many killers. He knew enthusiastic killers, indifferent killers, and regretful killers. Itachi may have had the highest body count of any man his age. But Kisame was sure of this: one did not kill as prolifically as Itachi and have the regretful personality. When killing became his profession, a man calloused his heart, or cracked like an egg.

"You killed your mom, your dad, your brothers, and _this_ assassination mission bothers you?"

A sudden determination seized Itachi. "I didn't kill my brother. No, I killed everyone but him."

Itachi had a living brother? Interest caught his tone. "Why did you spare him?"

"Why raise a _sow_." Venom dripped the parricide's voice.

Kisame hesitated. He thought about when Deidara named them all cannibals the other night, and what those ancient clans did with eyeballs. Would he harvest the eyes from the child he let live? Kisame received convoluted signals from Itachi. Uchiha Itachi was either the most evil man he'd ever met, or he had no place in the Akatsuki at all.

Kisame's instincts were fine, and he trusted his suspicion. "What if I told you, I don't believe you killed your clan."

"You'd be wrong. I killed eighty people that night."

"I'm not sure you're evil," Kisame ventured, calm but solid. "I'm not sure you're one of us."

Their eyes met and Itachi sighed like a teacher.

Kisame heard a rustling then, of someone running exhausted and clumsily through the leaves, and he rose to fight. Itachi's worthy paranoia had not concealed them. A slender blue hand braced itself against a tree, and the arrived woman clutched at a bundle at her breast. Her familiar black eyes flashed to meet Kisame from the shadows, and her panting lips smiled weakly.

"Kisame… I hoped to the gods it was you."

He looked to Itachi, to make sure what he saw was real. The fire ninja stood tense and confused, ready to reach for a knife or a bandage, but he waited for Kisame to show him which. Akaei was always a fine sensor, she could sense chakra in the air as good sharks blood in the water, and she had tracked him to these borderlands.

He strode to embrace his exhausted niece, to hug her, gods, she had gotten so tall, she was taller than Itachi. Akaei was warm in his arms; she escaped whatever of Mei's prison camps they had her in, and found one of the only surviving members of their family. She looked up at him urgently, someone else's blood had dried on her lilac cheeks. Then she looked down, and like a tender secret, bared to him the bundle she shielded at her breast.

"Kisa, they're after me. I… _he's_..."

He looked down. He did not know how she had come by the baby, but Akaei chose to protect it, and that was all the license he needed. It had its mother's cheek markings, _Hoshigaki_ markings, and pride for his withered clan bloomed in his chest. Akaei found the right uncle: he'd kill her pursuers. He'd shred them to greasy ribbons and if there was anything left he would toss the bleeding fatty hunks to his sharks. Finally someone he could relish killing. He swung Samehada off his back and stared daggers into the dark.

_Tsseer!_

Akaei yelped then, and staggered forward, blood spraying from her lips. A windmill shuriken quivered between her shoulder blades as she landed on the ground with splayed limbs. The baby screamed as it fell from her arms. Kisame looked at Itachi.

And Kisame realized that Akaei had never existed in this forest at all. Akaei had worms in her eyes and roaches in her heart, with bloodmist for a funeral shroud. His niece had been dead ten years. And he wondered how Itachi could know what she looked like.

"Not so evil, am I?"

Kisame's mind reeled. He wasn't sure what he felt; if a killer like him deserved to feel betrayed.

Itachi smiled like a knife. His teeth shone sharp and white like a small predator, a weasel, who killed hares three times his weight. His incarnadine eyes glowed bright as blood. He must be drunk, or drugged, or crazed from the stress.

A trickle of something rare and unwelcome entered Kisame's heart. His hand grazed Samehada's hilt in warning. "Watch yourself."

Itachi laughed. "Bring out Samehada! We'll make the world a better place and kill each other!"

"_Itachi."_

Two kunai pierced the nearest tree trunk at the level of Kisame's thyroid. He must have remained disoriented from the genjutsu, because the noise cleared his head like a bell. Itachi's voice was cold enough to crack stone:

"Fight. Or I'll kill you with a thought."

Kisame swung Samehada to smash it across Itachi's midsection, and the blue scales shredded lichen from the tree, and bark and fungus flew off in a cloud of spores. Itachi had dodged the showful strike lithely, easily, but it wasn't enough. Just being in the air near Samehada had the desired effect. And if Kisame would not swallow Itachi whole, he would carve him slice by slice. He did not know what Itachi wanted, but Kisame was determined not to fall prey to it.

Approaching glints. Kisame retracted his blade mid strike to block Itachi's steel. It was necessity: Itachi did not miss with a knife unless he wanted to, and he no longer knew what Itachi wanted.

Kisame struck at him, and Itachi dodged each swipe, but never by far enough. He would notice the chakra drain soon. The younger ninja would try to jump in with a kunai, but his reach with a knife was one tenth of Samehada's, and Itachi's strikes tested he was unable to draw a hit and escape the broadsword unscathed. His knives streaked by, but Kisame knew he only carried about twelve. Itachi could only get close enough to strike Kisame from one predictable angle.

Kisame felt Itachi phase behind him, and he jabbed the sword under his arm to land a strike on something solid but yielding. He spun to look at what he hit. Itachi clutched at his stomach— the scales had shredded his shirt and bled his skin underneath. His other hand grasped for support at the tree like Akaei's had, and his sharp shadow-hooded eyes evoked a bloodthirsty hawk. Then he fell to his knees.

Masterful though he used it, Itachi's small body held an unimpressive amount of chakra. His already low stamina was expended and eaten. Kisame stood above Itachi like an executioner with Samehada raised. The fire ninja braced himself on hands and knees, looking a lot like the coughing boy on the sand. But his hawk eyes threatened murder.

"Do it," Itachi said.

"No."

"Can't kill a partner?" Itachi dared.

"I can. I have."

"Plunge it!" Itachi demanded.

_Fine, boy_. Kisame stamped down his spine with the full weight of the erect sword's tip. The Fire ninja's limbs buckled, his chest plunged on to the earth, the breath crushed from his body, and his legs shook against the ground on impact.

"And this time, _I won't kill my partner."_ Kisame finished his previous sentence. He lifted the sword from Itachi's back.

Itachi turned himself over and coughed blood. His black eyes looked wrathfully at Kisame. And Kisame thought, even now, Itachi could maim him with those eyes. But easy as it would have been, Kisame noticed the whole fight, the most effective weapon in his arsenal went unused.

"Why not," Itachi demanded.

"Because, you might be the only friend I've ever had."

Itachi's arms splayed out to his side in defeat. "Damn me."

Itachi lay wounded. But he made no motion to move or bandage himself. Kisame did not intend to help him unless he asked. He waited for Itachi to explain, to apologize. Not for fighting him. But for genjutsuing him and stabbing his long-dead niece through the heart. For using him like a tool. For trying to commit suicide. But half an hour passed in silence, Itachi stared and bled, and nothing was said.

"I'll get you into the tree."

"I don't want to sleep in the tree."

"Too bad."

Kisame leant Itachi against a sturdy fork some seven meters up. He slumped. He would fall when his eyes closed, if not before. Taking the cloth intended for Samehada, he tied a white belt around Itachi's waist and the tree limb. He stared down at the fire ninja.

"You've got problems, Itachi. With the world, with yourself. But killing yourself, killing me, isn't gonna fix them."

Itachi's silence continued and he did not meet Kisame's eyes. Be it defiant, depressed, or ashamed, Kisame considered it incredibly rude. The silence awarded Kisame the last word like he was beneath arguing with or explaining to. And right now, if not an explanation, Kisame required acknowledgement. He leaned in close enough for his huge serrated teeth to flash inches from Itachi's soft face. Even Itachi was not unaffected, and at last his black eyes lifted to meet his.

"You're a smart boy. _Try. Harder_."

* * *

**Author's Note,**

Again, this is a pretty M story in terms of violence and themes, and the strongest of it is yet to come.

Wooo thanks for reading. This story will be ambitious in length and we're only in the exhibition. Let me know your thoughts.

Kelto


	5. Chapter 5: Kraken Hall

**-Hoshigaki Kisame-**

_Thukk_.

Right by his ear. His awakened eyes slid right. The tag of a paper bomb waved from a kunai.

Kisame sprung away in the fraction of a second before its detonation. Adrenaline damped pain: his neck and shoulder had been torn open, he did not know how much. His priority was seizing a few seconds of distance and time.

Midleap he looked for the boy, he was gone, the white cloth that bound him a twisting ribbon snaking to the forest floor.

Flickers manifested into crouching shapes on tree branches. Their animal masks denoted the Anbu of the Hidden Leaf, though the rogues were outside the Leaf's territory. The masks' inset eyes were round and black like a shark's, but leaf ninja moved like ghostly gray leopards. The assailants were three ninja: two men, one woman, and a ninja hound.

He had to get them out of the trees, the leaf ninja the advantage there. They met him on the ground. He grasped Samehada's hilt, and from the reserves of stolen chakra, his steaming flesh began to rapidly regrow where it was damaged. He grinned at the three masked ninja.

"Tell me, am I next to Itachi in your bingo book?"

There was no answer and a lightning jutsu struck at Kisame then. Huge and white and it sucked the air from the ground. He let it strike along Samehada, most of it was absorbed and channeled along the sword's scales, with the rest of the lightning shocking off into something behind him.

He felt Samehada purr. Or perhaps it was more like a stomach growling. As the leaf ninja stared in disbelief, he smashed the sword into someone's body, the shock traveled up his arms, and the exhilaration of combat flooded him.

He quickly dispatched the other two ninja with crushing strikes from his sword. Then the dog sprung at him. Dogs were not pets in the Mist and he never particularly liked them He grabbed the beast by its forelegs and winched them apart.

One, two, three, dog, down. Done.

He stepped forward to the bodies to make sure the job was finished, but his limbs didn't obey him. He looked down, an ink black shadow had reached to his foot, and somehow he could not move. One of the crumpled men he'd thought dead had wielded a shadow like a tentacle. Kisame tried to budge his leg, to shake off the tentacle like a rope, but it did not move.

Kisame struggled against the bind. He could move slightly. A few more seconds of fighting and he would break free. He stared inevitable death at the man, and he did not smile.

At that moment a shape, small and angular, inspective and fearless as a crow beside a carcass, appeared beside the crumpled Anbu. The Anbu's head turned to recognize the sudden darkness over his shoulder.

"Uchiha...Itachi..."

_Well_? Kisame wondered of his less-evil-than-he-thought partner. _What will you do?_

Itachi's red eyes looked deeply through the mask. Kisame could not know what nightmare was shared. But what he did see was Itachi's kunai strike. The tentacle around Kisame's leg uncoiled, and the fight was over.

Kisame wondered what summoned the assailants. Like a bird Itachi was so visually focused. Last night he had allowed no fires, no loud noises. But as fine as his sharingan was, it could never see a scent. From their skirmish hours before, the boy smelled like a bloodbath. And Kisame, feeling responsible, knew that he should have been wiser.

Itachi stepped to each of the three corpses and lifted their painted masks. He stared into their faces.

"No member of the Leaf's two ninja hound clans are among these dead," the former Leaf ninja said.

Kisame's eyes slid suspiciously to the surrounding forest. So, their main course was elsewhere.

Then Itachi placed the masks back on. To face the afterworld as they lived, he supposed. The sanctity of a human body never really mattered to Kisame. Dead meat was dead meat. He accepted none of the people in this clearing, alive or not, would ever receive a proper funeral.

Itachi parsed signs and raised a hand. Dozens of crows and ravens and hulking raptors bigger than cats arrived from somewhere. The birds were fearsome, but lightweights by nature, and Kisame wondered what a bird did with a human pelvis.

"You know what doesn't leave bones?" Kisame suggested.

Itachi's expression did not change.

_"Sharks."_

Icy Itachi looked at his expectant wards, and then at Kisame. "Leave them the hound."

Kisame lifted the human bodies and threw them into the river, and summoned four freshwater tolerant sharks. At a scarcely perceptible twitch of Itachi's finger the obedient ravens plunged. His bull sharks needed no such instruction, and when one did not not focus closely, the splashing sounded peaceable in comparison. The ravens, social and hierarchical, argued noisily with each other over the best positions. With a businesslike demeanor, the two ninja turned their backs to the clamor of devouring.

"The Leaf will have sent a second jounin squad after us. I will reroute them," Itachi said.

Itachi intended to bait an informed jounin team alone, in his condition, and probably half his unimpressive chakra with a shadow clone.

Kisame smiled. "Still slightly suicidal, I see."

_"I expect no problems."_

"Are you gonna say something to me about last night? Or are you just gonna let it fester?" Kisame said.

Itachi's eyes were sharp. "Do you want me to apologize for attempting suicide? Or for abusing you?"

"I want you to acknowledge that you looked into my head, revived my dead-sister's dead-kid, impregnated her, and stabbed her through the spine. To try to get me to kill you, because you decided that you can't cope with the fact that you're a killer. Have I got that right?"

Itachi continued aloofly. "I am different from all of you. Senseless killing bothers me deeply."

"You are so elitist. You think I wasn't bothered by it? You think when I was a boy, I wanted this?" Kisame gestured at himself, huge and beastly and covered in scars.

Itachi was midstride, but he stopped at Kisame's words. Kisame continued menacingly.

"I grew up in the Blood-Mist Village. I was younger than you when I became a killer. I have no family, no purpose, and almost no friends. So what I want to know, Itachi, is why you don't accept it like the rest of us."

"I can deal with the fact that I'm a killer. What I could not accept last night, Kisame, is my continuing existence in the Akatsuki causing dozens of unnecessary deaths. But whatever. It doesn't matter- you were right anyway. Ending myself is not going to solve this problem. It must be fought directly."

"Directly?" Kisame repeated. The word insinuated rebellion. Wars were won with less manpower than that would require for a rebellion against the Akatsuki, and Kisame knew he was under orders to take Itachi out if he did so.

Wisely, Itachi did not elaborate. The dark haired young man looked somewhere and Kisame followed his gaze down. The dog was just a skeleton. The winged scavengers took the bones in their slender beaks and flew away with them.

"We must leave now," Itachi said.

Kisame stepped onto the now-still water to hide his tracks and scent. He showed the scroll between his knuckles. "I'll start Kakuzu's other mission," he said gruffly.

"Hm."

Only a few wind-trembling feathers testified what happened at the scene, and the two ninja vanished with the wind that scattered them.

* * *

**—Uchiha Itachi—**

Itachi broke a twig between his fingers. In this moist climate, a twig would not have snapped naturally. The Anbu would halt to discuss the stick for a few precious moments and come to the same conclusion. Animals could leave smears in the moss. But only ninja leave decoys. Even if they did not have a second dog, they would know it was him.

But these Anbu would have another dog. No Inuzuka had been among the dead. No _Hatake_ had been among the dead...

_Ninja who abandon the rules are scum. But ninja who abandon their comrades are worse than scum. _

Itachi thought he had embodied the persona of cold parricide. Apparently not. His ruse of coldness had been translucent as ocean water. Strange round, silver and black eyes regarded him from his memory:

_You might just be the only friend I've ever had._

He had been cruel to manipulate his partner last night. Kisame had been uncomfortable fighting him, even as easy as Itachi planned to make it. He would find Kisame and apologize properly for his manipulative attempt. Maybe he could convince him to spare some of the bandits, Kisame probably would probably kill most of them if he did not interfere. Itachi hated these Akatsuki kill missions: Kakuzu, Pain, could just try and punish him for leaving some people alive after the goal was achieved. Kisame was right. Death would not solve the problem of Itachi's existence; he would have to think his way out.

That was far enough to cost the Anbu the necessary time. He parsed signs for a shadow clone, and his double unceremoniously continued forward. Last he tested, he could be separate from his clone for two kilometers before it disappeared. The real Itachi jumped some twenty meters to the water, expecting that if he did not touch solid matter, his scent would vanish in seconds in the air.

But he was not sure. He did not see his world through scent. He threw a final glance towards the past, towards the Anbu, towards his old captain Kakashi, then ignited his sharingan and focused on the way before him. Now, to track Kisame.

* * *

**—Hoshigaki Kisame—**

Kisame lowered the hand-drawn map and stared at the island that filled its place on the horizon. It was a fine little place for a bandit camp.

He stepped across the ocean water to where the stolen wooden skiffs crowded the island's white sand shore. He found the cave entrance by smell. Men: those lazy brutes had taken to pissing where they ate.

He walked into the tunnel. It would be inconvenient to swing Samehada in such a small place, but he did not expect the bandits would want to stay there long. Someone saw him and asked him a question. Kisame shoved their head into the wall and kept walking deeper into the cave. The scroll's task had been to 'eliminate the bandit threat,' and he would do that in the way he decided most enjoyable and convenient.

Two bigshots argued in the common area, surrounded by lower members. The two leaders raised swords at him, but he twisted their arms around, and thrust one into the blade of the other. Then the screams started. He threw the trembling survivor to the ground and stepped on his neck. A surrounding man threw a knife, Kisame returned it.

A woman called her comrades to flee. The remaining members streamed around him, out of the cave, down the beach, and Kisame stalked after the prey unhurriedly. They untethered their rowboats and launched them into the waves, running astride their vessels, tossing oars to each other.

He wet his feet in the surf and shed his robe on the beach. A grin slit his lips. He parsed a few signs, and a water dragon overturned the skiffs to spill their human cargo into the sea. He let Samehada's spiked pommel embed in the skin of his palm. _What a terrible day to be a pirate,_ he thought as the cool tide sloshed against his now-sandpaper hide.

He smashed a skiff with a whip of his tail. The electricity in his snout fired ablaze, they were so alive, so frantic, so afraid. This prey was small, a tenth of his weight, almost small enough to swallow whole. Their tender bones waned and crunched in his jaws. He'd bite, tear, release when the muscles flexed limp, and bite the next thing that moved. The blood was intoxicating, heavy, arousing. The meat in his mouth did not taste bad.

He pictured Itachi. The cruel face he made last night shined in his mind's eye. With his grinning teeth and the weasel look in his bloodthirsty, fight-hungry eyes. _Bring out Samehada!_

An impulse occurred to him. He had not done that before. But that did not mean he could not start. He was frightfully hungry. A chemical of frenzied excitement flooded his brain, no longer fully human, at the prospect.

He identified a target. The shark sank into the depths for a pregnant moment. Then he snapped the red-muscled braided whip of his tail, shot dart-fast towards the surface, and a second before he breached, he yawned wide a razored chasm that did not intend to stop before Nature's ultimate goal.

—-—

Kisame staggered human out of the waves. He descended from the fogging rausch, the tremendous high. His hands trembled from ecstasy, from shock, from disbelief.

An uncomfortable feeling plagued him. It was the first time in fifteen years that he felt it. Not quite fear, not quite cold, but it gripped him around the chest like those. It was the unfamiliar realization that, maybe, he had done something terribly wrong.

He swung Samehada off his body and flung it viciously against a palm tree, and he leered at it with shark teeth bared.

"Look what you made me _do!"_

The words felt hollow when they became reality. He knew better than to decry a sword. It was not Samehada's fault, it was not Itachi's fault. The deed had been his alone. He knew not which god to pray to forgiveness, or demon for sanctuary.

"Holy Buddha, Amaterasu, Susanoo, fuck it, Jashin, _anybody."_

He knelt on the sand.

"Why did I do that?"

Kisame's gods, as always, remained silent.

Looking at the familiarity of his own humanlike limbs made him want to retch, but he knew retching would not absolve his sin. He did not know the physics of it. If he ate something big, and then he shrank back down to normal size. But he felt gorged and sick and he could not bear the thought of eating. He could not bear the thought of meat, of flesh. Of muscles pulling under skin, of intricate ligaments gently meshed to slippery bones... He looked away from his own body and towards the ocean horizon.

He did not indulge in the sleep his exhausted body craved. He sat on the beach, feeling strangely nervous. He let the surf wash coolly over him, but it brought little relief. Something hard and smooth as a shard of human skull brushed by his hand on a wave. He jolted his hand away from it, but in the setting sun's light, saw it was just a harmless abalone sea shell. The iridescent mother-of-pearl material glittered gently like mica in his hand.

He took Samehada off the tree. The moment he did, he was blasted with the instrument's chakra sensing ability. Itachi was tracking him, and a shock of unease probed him: he did not want to see Itachi right now.

Water crested around his ankles. He rubbed the smooth abalone shard with his thumb like a netsuke. He felt the sharingan-wielder nearing and decided it would be too much effort to evade him.

"Hey." A pause. "Bandits are taken care of?"

"Yeah."

"Do we have bodies to dispose of?"

"No."

Itachi had speared two fish next to a burning, salt-blue piece of driftwood. "You want some?"

"I'm not hungry."

Itachi's vivisecting black eyes probed him. Or maybe it was just a normal look. Kisame feared what he could see with those eyes, if he could read inside his mind, and pluck his nightmares into reality, like he had with Akaei.

Itachi waved his hand. "Come sit by me."

Kisame sat by him.

"Kisame, I'm sorry I attacked you last night. I thought a world minus me was for the best."

"Itachi, the day men like you are the bad ones, is the day this world has gone to shit," he said.

"I manipulated you, and I terrorized you, and I tried to kill myself. Do you forgive me?"

"Yeah. But do it again, I'll..." _bite you in half,_ he would have said to someone else, sometime else, but he found his usual bravado unappetizing. "Don't do it again."

"Thank you, Kisame."

Itachi ate alone, his tiny teeth deftly lifting skin and muscle from bone, neat and quiet, but not silent. Kisame stared at the colorful abalone shard and stroked it between his thumb and finger. It was smooth and flat and not quite triangular. Like a tooth, or maybe a teardrop.

"I did something I regret today, Itachi," Kisame eventually said. In the absence of talking, he had been unable to focus on anything else.

Itachi looked over the moon-streaked water. "At times it's hard to live with our crimes. But we need to understand that we are worthy of our own acceptance."

Did he know? Maybe. Maybe those eyes saw every thought Kisame had ever thought. But Itachi did not grasp the crux of the incident that troubled Kisame.

"It felt_ good_."

Now Itachi understood the severity of the problem. The young man bridged his hands before his nose and closed his eyes, and stayed quiet. Kisame suspected he knew.

"I understand if you want to spend a few days away from me, or want to leave altogether," Kisame said.

"If you're sorry, I'll forgive you."

Kisame raised a calm eyebrow, looking down at his sea shell. This was different from Itachi's crime. "I'm not sure this is yours to forgive."

"Then, I accept you."

He contemplated the sentiment. Unlike forgiveness, acceptance invoked no debt, no guilt, and nothing to prove. There was nothing about it he could interpret as ingenuine or undeserved. It was merely a validation of his existence. He did not ask for forgiveness, or was so forward as to say he deserved it. Acceptance… Kisame liked that.

Itachi's eyes slid to the object in Kisame's upturned palm. "What is that?"

"It's an abalone shell." He passed it to his partner.

Itachi's eyes flashed red for a second and he smiled small. "It's beautiful. It has many unique colors, ones humans cannot even see. What kind of animal lived in it?"

"An abalone is a big, ugly, sea snail the size of a rat that eats slime off rocks."

"The universe is wise, how even such a wretched creature must not stay ugly at its core, is it not?"

"You can have it if you want," Kisame said. Itachi was a small, pretty man who seemed to like small, pretty things.

Itachi handed it back. "I think you'd better keep it."

He turned the silvery rainbow shard around in his palm. Yes. He would keep it, to remind him of the stupid, ugly, scum-eating, ocean creature that Itachi decided was still beautiful. He was glad Itachi found him this night. He would be miserable alone. The two ninja sat before the glow of the salt-blue flames, and stared up at the thick belt of stars.

"If you're not a bad person, and you've hated killing in the Akatsuki the whole time, why did you decide after this mission to off yourself?" Kisame asked.

"Utilitarian ethics. I had a goal, but I realized that fewer people will die if I was dead."

"Avoiding physical trauma… it might not be the most ethical thing, you know," Kisame said.

Itachi gave him a doubting look. He was starting to not be terrible at reading Itachi's expressions.

"Have you ever thought about what makes _you_ happy?"

"Rarely," Itachi said.

"Maybe this Eye of the Moon scheme can make the world a better place for people like us," Kisame said.

Kisame noted Itachi's flinch. Of course Itachi would know, he and their leader were related, after all, but it was a privilege for Kisame to know the secret of the Akatsuki's true plan, the Eye of the Moon.

The Uchiha looked at him intensely. "You know the truth."

"That our leader is Uchiha Madara? Yes. He recruited me personally," Kisame said.

"Even I… was not strong enough to kill the Uchiha clan alone. Madara helped me do it."

Itachi's lips were uncharacteristically loose, and Kisame, always a hunter, identified when to act. "History paints Madara as a fanatic for his clan. Why would he cull his own legacy?"

"Some seventy years ago, Madara thought the Uchiha betrayed him when we wanted peace alongside the Senju."

"Then maybe it makes sense for _him_ to kill his clan. But you… I can't explain why you'd do it."

The silence hung. Itachi did not relieve it with an explanation. Kisame's luck had run out and Itachi was again taciturn.

Kisame looked around. It was well into the night. Itachi probably did not like this exposed beach for a campsite. "Where should we sleep?"

Itachi signaled their departure by standing. "I noted a possibility on my way."

Kisame looked out into the blackness. "You can see in this?"

Red eyes gleamed. "Moderately."

Kisame took a torch from the fire for himself, washed the ash into the waves, and followed Itachi.

With the starfield and ocean on his left, Kisame followed the small swift shadow through the dark hemisphere along the rocky coast. Itachi sprang down the sharp rocks with the same limberness of the Leaf Anbu, and he realized the boy had spent his formative years among their ranks. Kisame felt somewhat clumsier, hindered by the dark and a torch. They found themselves in a tidal cave which overlooked the sea, with shallow tide pools on its sharp floor. He peered into one: an octopus wilted into the cracks at his face.

"Need we be concerned about the tide?" Itachi asked him.

Kisame noted the lack of algae on the wall and the height of the moon. "No."

Itachi leaned his back against the sharp wall and let his legs sink. Kisame doused his torch in an unoccupied tidepool. With the moonlight that reflected in flashing tortoise-shells from the ocean, he could see the silver edge of Itachi's short, angular face.

Itachi stared at him for a moment, as if deciding to say something. He said, "Good night, Kisame."

Kisame was caught off guard. But he too formed his lips around the strange words. "Good night, Itachi."

Itachi closed his eyes and Kisame leaned himself on the wall opposite him. But now Kisame was watchful, and for a while he stayed awake to the sounds of waves. Comforting, hollow sounds, that like the breaths of ghosts, reminded him of a home that no longer existed.

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_Thanks for reading!_

_I am looking for a new Beta for this story. If you are 18+ and might be interested in looking over this story with me for style and plot, please write me a message. I'd love to have a partner to make this piece as strong as it can be. Thanks!_

_And if you like reading this, please do let me know your thoughts in a review._

_Steadfast,_

_Kelto_


	6. Chapter 6: Scavengers

**-Uchiha Itachi-**

"Itachi, wake up."

"Itachi."

_"Itachi."_

Itachi opened his eyes and regarded his partner calmly. The first thing he saw was Kisame retracting a guilty hand, and a bluish eyebrow twitched. "Did you have trouble sleeping?"

Apparently he had overslept.

"The nights in this country are short," Itachi said.

Kisame looked over at the rising sun over the waves. It was already two hours high. But the Mist ninja said nothing to contradict his partner.

Gulls wheeled as the pair trekked along the sand. They walked in the wetness where their footprints were quickly erased by the swiping glasslike waves.

"Finally!" A voice behind them said.

The disturbance's whining tone signaled no threat and dually annoyed Itachi. Zetsu had risen from the dunegrass, grains of white quartzite sand rivuletting down the creases in his leafed crest. Itachi did not particularly like Zetsu: it was some kind of association that the plant-ninja always brought bad news.

"About time we found you two!" the white half exclaimed. "I can't see or hear well through the ocean."

Zetsu could not spy as efficiently underwater or at beaches. Itachi filed the information for later use.

"Pain requests you meet at a cave on the eastern bank of Rido Lake, in the Land of Rivers, five days from today,' he said matter of factly.

Itachi and Kisame looked at each other.

Zetsu continued excitedly. "It's a doosie, the whole gang is invited! Well, I'll give you a hint. We're going on a Tailed Beast Hunt!"

Kisame raised an eyebrow. "Tailed Beast Hunt?"

"Yes! Don't be late! Five days, Rido Lake, at noon!"

The plant-ninja seeped back into the earth. Itachi always found Zetsu's rare locomotion an anomaly. But Itachi supposed even his own powers, logical to him, looked enviously strange from the outside.

"Know anything about tailed beasts?" Kisame asked.

"The Nine Tailed Fox attacked my village when I was five. It destroyed the Uchiha complex and killed the Hokage...They sealed it in a child."

"The Mist's Tailed Beast has been missing since the death of the Mizukage."

"Hm." Itachi said. The hunt must be no small feat if the other teams were enlisted for the same task. At least, according to Zetsu, they had some days for themselves before they needed to report. Itachi was mildly curious of the mission, but not enthusiastic.

"Do we need to do anything before then?" Kisame asked.

Like say goodbye to friends and family? With a silent glance at the eastern sun, Itachi discerned their orientation, and led them in the direction of the Land of Rivers, a several days' walk away.

"It would be faster if we cut across the gulf."

"I can neither run nor swim a gulf."

"I'm not convinced you can swim at all."

The two ninja traveled a quiet day through the small countries. It was the custom of outlaws to make their routes through the disorganized and impoverished ring of states outside the great nations. These strapped militias did not track killers so long as they wandered peaceably.

As they walked along a path, the bisected village was freshly burned. A miasma of death, fine as silt and equally pervasive, clogged the air. A battlefield passed them by, and narrow flags streamed from spear points embedded in earth and armor.

"Looks like a civil war."

"Or a blood feud."

Hopping crows scattered before the two rogues. Most of the corpses wore old fashioned layered armor and carried swords. _Like the Uchiha and Senju_, he thought. But he doubted any were above genin in this battle.

He turned one of the soldiers over. It rolled too light in its iron shell, a woman, or a boy. A boy. Itachi searched him, but found only copper, and he left it. He did this to three other corpses, but found no food, only money.

"You check for threats. I'll search for anything useful," Itachi said, and Kisame disappeared.

Itachi stole suspicious and warily into the hamlet, a habit he could not shake despite the lack of threat. The thatch from the houses was half burned, and the village's inhabitants were dead or fled. He pushed open a garden gate.

Twisted in old rebellion against the dry summer grasses, gnarled black tree trunks reached towards the sky. Itachi's eyes flitted hopefully through the ravaged orchard like a songbird. Too high for even the lightest village children, a few orange persimmon fruits dotted the canopy.

With a flighting leap he landed on a tree's fork, picked the ripest fruit, and with his watchful eyes flashing left and right, he sank his teeth into the water-soft flesh. Persimmons were sweet and fibrous and very healthy. Life with Kisame had him eating a lot of meat. A hooded crow alighted on a nearby branch to observe him. He offered the bird a peeled slice of the fruit, stretching to rest it in a forked branch at the edge of his reach. The bird stared at him and cocked her head. Itachi realized she had ample... more nutritious options.

The hamlet appeared abandoned from his vantage, and Kisame had made himself invisible. Itachi continued to explore the hamlet, but found little in the way of life or clues. The little crow followed him. An emaciated pig lay dead in a nearby pen. Kisame would like that. The patient crow watched him open the carcass and a squawk summoned her friends.

He walked into the mostly-intact adjacent hut with the pork balanced gingerly between his hands. The abandoned one-room house displayed a traditional kitchen: a pile of coals inset in a square hole in the center of the tatami floor. He might not be better at catching fish than Kisame, -no he was still probably better at fishing than Kisame- but he was definitely a better cook. With the pork fillet, soy sauce, peppercorns and herbs he found around the property, he practiced his art over a dead family's hearth. Kisame stepped through the threshold some time later.

"No one is here but some corpse robbers, who are hiding from us about a quarter kilometer away."

"How respectful of them," Itachi noted.

Kisame grunted. Itachi gestured for Kisame to sit opposite him as he continued to cook. Kisame's eyes traced out the window at the carnage, and he released an abandoned laugh.

"Reminds me of my teenage years.

Itachi followed his gaze. "Indeed."

The oppressive silence of dead men blanketed them. As the coal-fire stoked, the hut they sat in was empty from any laughter it had days ago. The universe had conspired to put two ruthless killers into a village that now offered no one to kill. The Akatsuki had always killed and left. Now Itachi would see what he created.

_No._ He spared the Leaf from this.

"The Eye of the Moon will end this excess," Kisame said soberly from across the coals.

"We'll find no satisfaction in illusion," Itachi said.

Kisame twitched his lip in a tight smile, unexpected to have lured Itachi to finally spar.

"How can you be sure that your belief that reality is superior to fiction, is itself not false?" Kisame's posed.

"Because I weave fiction."

Itachi had authored his ideal life once, right before he killed his clan.

He had cast Tsukuyomi on his… what was she? Izumi. He wove them a fiction of their life together, of having children, growing old and dying. And he remembered, for a few seconds that lasted her seventy years, she was happy. But through the whole thing he'd felt the unimaginable sense of dread that came with knowing he was in a dream. A few seconds later, Izumi's flesh was as broken as her mind was. And Itachi was broken in a new way too.

"I can show you," Itachi said. He hadn't meant it to be a threat but maybe it sounded like one. "What the Tsukuyomi is like."

A pause. "Don't."

Itachi let the conversation end. Kisame seemed most purposed in his whole life serving the Akatsuki. But to Itachi, his hunted years spent under red clouds was no life. He remembered no moments in the last four years where he was not either fleeing, hungry, hurt, exhausted, or lonely.

Or maybe this was normal and just came with being his age. He read that people his age needed more food and sleep. He had no one to ask. He looked at Kisame, but he decided not to.

The sweet, peppery scent of shogayaki goaded his hunger. His eyes flickered to Kisame; it probably smelled even better to him. Quietly proud of his wartime creation, he began to serve Kisame a proportionally larger serving to his own.

Kisame's fingertips interrupted his offering. "You eat it."

Itachi narrowed his eyes at the insult. For two days now he had not seen Kisame eat, on their lifestyle which burned tens of thousands of calories daily.

"There is an entire boar, already dead," Itachi reiterated.

"You're scrawny and should eat more."

He had never been spoken to that way. Silent in his irritation, Itachi ate. Kisame was an adult and a soldier, and Itachi knew he would not die by something as letting himself starve.

Itachi's annoyance soured the food, and he had prepared enough for two Kisames. It was impossible for a single person his size to consume, and Itachi never liked overeating, especially in hostile territory.

"I can't eat all of this."

"What do you want _me_ to do about it?"

"Do as you like."

He heard a small exhale from Kisame.

"Pork, it tastes too much like…" Kisame shook his head.

Perhaps he should have expected this. Itachi was suddenly uneasy with Kisame's candidness, when Itachi had been willing to bury the other day's incident. He worried he had been rude. He set his knife on the wood and stood. "Come with me."

Hesitant, Kisame followed him. Itachi halted before the orchard, the black-barked and scarcely-leafed persimmon trees stretching like dead fingers to the sky.

"I didn't think you ate fruit." Itachi explained the omittance. It seemed a ridiculous assumption now.

Itachi watched his partner's back as he walked forward, lit by the pink ash-hazed sun. He tried to focus on Kisame, or on the sunset, for if his gaze wandered, he would see the distance was fecund with death.

"Yo!"

Their eyes locked on the noise. Like a monkey from a tree branch, Tobi hung upside down from a permission limb. He completed his flip and landed sprightly on the earth to trot towards the two men.

Itachi and Kisame had the senses of beasts. No human could sneak up on them while they were awake. It was like the man had materialized from ash and smoke.

"Hi Kisame! Itachi! I thought of you, you know, and I knew I had to find you! Come see, Tachi! I found this toad that totally looks like you!"

Tobi had taken Itachi's arm and started pulling him in some direction. Itachi looked back at Kisame for something, —-he didn't know— for explanation, for sympathy, for help.

Itachi felt himself being sucked in somewhere, transported somewhere dark, then moved again back to the human world. Kisame and the ash were gone. Itachi and the spiral-masked man faced each other in a grassy plain.

The red eye through the mask was narrow, the aura menacing.

"I let slide your insubordination at the brothel. But discrediting the Eye of the Moon to Kisame is a new level of idiocy."

Fear's icy brine chilled Itachi's veins. Lowering his act even slightly to Kisame had been a deadly mistake.

"Kisame is still in full support of the Eye of the Moon," Itachi said.

The lie to shield his partner flowed smooth as silk before Madara. But he realized then its plausibility. Kisame had baited and strung Itachi as deftly as he would a catfish, and thrown him to the leviathan.

Madara made a dismissive, subvocal noise. "Do you remember our agreement from that long night?"

"You kill the Uchiha police force and don't harm the Leaf. I help you in the Akatsuki."

"It's a pact you'll only escape when one of us is dead. Too bad for you and the Leaf, you'll die first."

Itachi lit Amaterasu then. The inferno feasted on Madara's clothes, he smelled it roast his skin, and the elder Uchiha screamed and cursed, and he disappeared in a swirl. Itachi did not know what the retreat meant, but he did not think the incident was over, so he fled for the forest.

Moments later Madara appeared on a tree branch in front of him, unflamed. Itachi kept running. This was not Itachi's first dance with a teleporter— and he knew to deal with them better than most.

The bait untaken, Madara disappeared again.

Then Madara phased centimeters in front of him. Itachi should have crashed into him, but there was no collision, rather Itachi suddenly found himself cut around the waist by a chain. Madara viced it taught around him and smashed Itachi to a tree trunk.

"Pain was never the one you needed to worry about."

Terrified and adrenalized, Itachi zapped him again with the Amaterasu. Madara swore and disappeared. Exhausted and half blind, Itachi's trembling fingers started to untie himself.

Madara returned and kicked the chained man in the stomach. _"That again?"_

Itachi recovered and stared at him wrathfully. Madara's only eye was shadowed by the mask, and Itachi could not establish the contact he needed for Tsukuyomi.

"Each user of the Mangekyou has one ability for each eye. Yours are the black flames, Amaterasu, and the nightmare realm, Tsukuyomi, right?"

"Take your mask off," Itachi breathed.

"I've been meaning to teach you something for a while. You buried the knowledge of Indra's clan when you killed them. They were weak, but the eldest Uchiha knew the old paths, even if they could not climb them. And orphaned, you now need instruction in using our highest gifts." Madara's voice had adopted a helpful tone.

"I want none of the knowledge that has poisoned you."

Itachi said it, but he wasn't sure he was so noble. Beneath his fear was the instinct to collect advantages. He had learned long ago to enact what sin justice demanded.

"There's a third ability that everyone with two mangekyou has. You have the eyes, but there's a nose. How's your knowledge of religion, Itachi?"

"Very well."

"Good. Then you know already what we call him."

Their eyes locked. A hypnotic heartbeat passed in synchrony.

The air cracked with chakra and the space around Madara hazed cobalt blue. Itachi's lips parted in disbelief. A huge skeleton formed around Madara, which lengthened as it became threaded with corded muscles, skin, and at last armor. A huge blue, astral samurai.

Madara spoke. "Amaterasu emerges through grief. Tsukuyomi through fear. Susanoo is a wrathful god, and his likeness is unlocked by hate."

Quick as a whip, the Susanoo lifted Itachi, its hand covered his eyes and twisted his neck like a bird, and the other crushed him until his ribs cracked. Itachi screamed, and his lungs filled with blood, and he felt his spine compressing, and he knew he would soon die. But above the pain, above it all, he hated the man before him. He wanted Madara dead. He wanted to flay the skin off him. He wanted to rend him full of nightmares, stab him through the tsukuyomi, and burn his corpse. Because if Madara didn't control the fox, he would not be in the Akatsuki, the scorned Uchiha would not have revolted, and everyone he had loved would be alive.

And at last Itachi's cracking ribs ceased. His body was wracked with pain, but he could breathe. The air tasted ozone and electric. He could just barely see that red bars of chakra, like a ribcage, had formed around his own body in protection. Madara's susanoo released him.

"I need you alive for something, for now. This ethical streak, however... I'll rub that out soon enough."

He dared the hateful glare of a man who could not stand at Madara. "I'll soak the earth with your guts."

A laugh. "Good progress."

The blur shaped like Madara admired the fallen Uchiha a moment more; in Itachi's imagination he was smug. Madara disappeared in a silent vortex from his right eye. Maybe Itachi had played into Madara's hands, but they both had what they wanted. Itachi had knowledge, and he was not dead. Yet. Itachi's fiery ribs extinguished with the threat, and he collapsed to bleed his life unto the ungrateful earth.

* * *

** _Author's Note:_ **

_Apologies for the wait on this one, folks. Thanks very much to beta SilverLion for her help!_

_See you next time,_

_Kelto_


	7. Chapter 7: Yatagarasu

**Chapter 7 : Yatagarasu**

_Author's Note:_ Thanks for waiting for this chapter. If you want a quick refresher, last time in _Campfires_, _Madara_ cornered Itachi for suggesting disloyalty to the Akastuki to Kisame. Madara handed Itachi his own ass, but Itachi briefly unlocked the Susanoo and is now bleeding out on the ground.

* * *

**-Uchiha Itachi-**

Itachi dragged his thumb through the blood on his _everywhere_ and smeared it to a pattern on the dirt. Smoke overtook the scent of blood, and he saw soft light gently reflect on scaled black claws. Itachi did not know if he could trust his partner to help him, but the alternative was death.

"Bring me Kisame."

The four-spiked eye of a martyr blinked animally, and the toothy choanal slit inside its beak separated the fading light as it cawed its obedience. Air and dust from the downstroke puffed against his face, and Itachi was terrifyingly, relievingly, alone.

Itachi focused on breathing. In and out, like the waves on the sand of the mangrove shore. He wanted to cough, but some still-reptile part of his brain advised him that was unwise. The vibrant world of the sharingan had faded in the sad colors and weak detail of an ordinary human eye, and then to something less than that. Itachi did not know if he closed his eyes, he did not know how blind he was, some things he saw from multiple angles at once... He drew gentle swirls with his fingers in the mud. Tiny Vs like rising crows, no, they were gills, three tight chevrons next to esurient silver eyes. Why was there mud beneath him? The summer was hot and dry.

He could see a dead weasel on the ground next to him. A convocation of crows gathered in an impatient funeral. With plunging swordlike beaks they tore out the weasel's tongue. They raised its tiny black eyes, tender as berries, and the nerves slithered down their throats. A crow hopped over the corpse's ribs, it had three legs. They tore open Itachi's chest and bore into his heart and all was hot and red, and then, nothing.

He heard a hiss. _Samehada, no, heal him damn you!_

He felt wind on his face, and his head swung dizzily, though he didn't remember telling his legs to move. The being who smelled of ocean's salt took him somewhere; its humid scent was unfamiliar to him.

Two strange tall birds looked at him. One was orange with violet eyes and the other was violet with orange eyes.

"He needs a healer," the breath of salt sailed to the violet bird.

"I'm a sensory ninja. Not a medic. But there's a doctor in a village nearby."

The world shifted as the ocean bowed. "I'm sorry for assuming."

Shivering steel chilled Itachi's wet skin. A bee stung him on the arm. Someone gave him a glass of orange juice with a straw. It was sweet, tangy and delicious, bright as an orange blossom on a mud puddle. His attention drew to this glass of juice, and his surroundings sharpened. He became aware of a stranger in a white coat in the background.

"The IV will ease the desanguination. However, proceeding further has drawbacks..."

"Like what?" the ocean voice said.

Itachi was out of orange juice. He tried to get the doctor's attention, but he was busy. A blue hand gave him another juice. What a kind hand.

"Chakra-healing him will cause permanent scar tissue damage in his chest cavity. If we go through with this, he could have endurance problems for the rest of his life."

"And if you do nothing?"

"The internal bleeding will rot his organs, and in two days, sepsis will kill him."

"Please do all you can."

The doctor placed his cold hands on Itachi's bare chest. He felt he should have shivered, or flinched, but his body would no longer respond to its nervous impulses. A pulsing like ripples on a puddle spread across his body. It warmed his limbs like alcohol but dispelled the delirium like icewater.

Itachi coughed the blood clot that previously must have held his lungs together. The doctor grimaced.

"Excuse me," Itachi apologized through bloody teeth, looking up at an unfamiliar doctor from the red soaked towel.

The doctor's eyes traced to the medical-waste bin adjacent the chair, and Itachi deposited the towel there.

"How do you feel?" the doctor asked.

Itachi did not feel like answering. He looked instead at the two other menacing individuals in the room with him.

"You are, as usual, praised for your discretion," Konan, the violet crane, told the doctor in what was both thanks and a threat. She drew a black velvet pouch from her robe and paid him in gold coins. It seemed Konan at least was unconstrained by Kakuzu's budget. The pleased doctor accepted the gold without concern.

Itachi examined the treatment room. The equipment was modern, but it was on the ground floor of an ordinary building, with mud walls, and a glassless sunny window. Konan and Kisame stood backlit. He had thought he'd seen Pain, but their leader had not accompanied them to the doctor if he had been there at all. Itachi was not sure what he had imagined of the last hours and what was real. In as subtle a way as he could, he pressed his fingertips over his own eyelids, his tongue against his palette, to make sure they were real. That no crows had picked them out.

He looked at Kisame, his silver eyes were like cautious mirrors. In front of this doctor and Konan, Kisame's expression maintained a perfect mask of normality. Itachi was tempted to probe his thoughts, cast aside the flimsy tin shields guarding the man's mind and dive beneath. He could do it, but he didn't.

The three Akatsuki exited the building. Konan, tall for a woman at his height, walked on his right side with Kisame on his left. Her amber eyes slid to Itachi with aloof concern. "Who did this?"

"Anbu got a hit in while we slept. We took care of them," Kisame answered for him.

"It happens. Have someone professional clean your robes," she advised. She gave them each a gold coin. Little did she know they were already loaded with stolen cash. But they took the gold anyway.

She flared her angular paper wings, and Konan left the fire and water pair to their devices.

"Do we stink?" Itachi asked, turning the gold coin.

"Yes. Well, _you_ do. I can't smell me."

The chakra healing left Itachi feeling disquietingly whole, minus a tightness in his chest. It had been since his Leaf Village days that he received effective treatment. The closest the Akatsuki pack of killers had to a field medic was Kakuzu, and well… fortunately Itachi had never needed his reattachment specialty. Or Sasori, who after a battle might aloofly recommend a certain plant. '_A purple mountain bloom with heart shaped leaves, but_ _chew only its roots, for the pistil metabolizes a stealthy toxin when combined with hydrochloric acid…'_

A stealthy toxin.

Kisame gave him a wary, perhaps expectant, side eye as the two men walked silently abreast.

"A question for you, Kisame."

"Yes?"

"You do understand, entrapping me would not be wise for your health," Itachi warned, eyes straight forward.

"You think I set you up?"

"I entertain the possibility. You repeatedly asked me about the Infinite Tsukuyomi, interrogated me on the whisper of disagreement, and Zetsu reported it to Madara."

A daring smile. Kisame halted on the path. "Why don't you just look in my head and find out?"

Itachi used no genjutsu on Kisame. When he didn't, Kisame spoke.

"When you disappeared from that orchard, I imagined you and our leader had some Uchiha secrets to discuss. Or you pissed him off. That raven of yours found me, and with one look at your sorry carcass, I knew that you _definitely_ pissed him off.

"_But_, if Madara wanted you dead, I would not have been able to help you."

Kisame's statement did not exactly exonerate him of double play. Obviously Madara had still had a use for Itachi in letting him live, and therefore Kisame would be instructed to treat him. But it did explain Kisame's train of thought. He believed Kisame was innocent of conducting any purposeful snare against him, for now. Perhaps in asking his questions, the wandering Kisame had just been curious on his worldview. And Itachi realized, he wanted to investigate his partner's principles as well.

"What happened after Madara took you?" Kisame asked.

"Madara used his ability to teleport me somewhere, through some other dimension. We exchanged words, then blows. When he let me live, I vowed my hatred."

"_Hopefully _he'll credit your rudeness to you being delirious from pain," Kisame continued. "Otherwise, you've got a problem on your hands."

Somehow Kisame's chastation relieved him.

"I know," Itachi agreed. "You need not worry about me. I'll hunt this beast of his — I would prefer not to die."

A short, sure laugh from Kisame.

Itachi's contract with Madara stood: the Leaf would be safe from him as long as he fell in the Akatsuki line. And Itachi would do whatever it took to serve the Will of Fire. Itachi was, for better or for worse, a master of small evils.

"In my hallucinations, I saw the three-legged crow, Yatagarasu. In the myth of my country, he heralds the emergence of gods," Itachi said.

"You've got some weird religion in the Leaf," Kisame dismissed.

"What is the folk religion in the Mist?"

"Our elders say the world was born on the back of a giant turtle. And when that turtle dies, the world will sink back into the sea."

"So you learn how to swim," Itachi noted.

"I'm not saying I believe in _giant turtle gods_."

"What does Hoshigaki Kisame believe in then?"

A grunt, apparently.

Itachi had his Will of Fire. But Kisame was a being on the hunt, the hunt for some sort of belief system. He sought belonging in serving something greater than himself. So he attached himself to Akatsuki and the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Without it Kisame had no purpose and no self.

No, that last part was false.

"Thank you for helping me," Itachi said. "I apologize for accusing you of betraying me."

Kisame looked away from him and said, "Not a problem."

Itachi viewed the sky with his Sharingan. He searched for the ultraviolet aurora of the earth's magnetic field. Perhaps in a peaceful century, the Uchiha clan would reveal to scientists that this was the mystery of how birds migrated: they could see these magnetic, purplish, static in the sky that indicated latitude and north. But Itachi's ancestors taught him early to never reveal exactly how the Sharingan worked to outsiders. The magnetic field hazed in a weak aurora far to the northern horizon, indicating that they were further south than previously.

"Where exactly are we?" Itachi asked.

"Can you smell it? Land of Tea," Kisame answered.

An idea germinated in Itachi. It would be on the way. He thought of banished Susanoo, who wandering earth after his crimes, found his greatest weapon, his Totsuka Blade, in the belly of a giant serpent he had slain.

"I would like to speak with someone here."

"Never took you for one good at making friends."

"I'm not."

"Anything I should know about them?"

"If he licks you… bite him."

Kisame, expression amused, gestured for Itachi to lead the way.

In a few hours, the two dangerous men had arrived in an equally dangerous place.

With his Sharingan, Itachi noticed a small camouflaged snake emerge from a crack, flick its tongue, and recede. He was unsure if his target would answer his summons but it was worth trying. _No,_ he would be answered. This man's greatest sin was curiosity. He would not be able to resist wondering why Uchiha Itachi was on his doorstep, even if it killed him.

The stonework hidden under the jungle vines began to tremble. Itachi had not seen this individual since their last clash in the Akatsuki. Itachi had paralyzed him with a glance and struck his body full of rods. He had not even needed the Tsukuyomi.

A slender white-skinned demon stepped from the revealed earthen cave. His venom-smooth androgynous voice coursed unruffled to the two ninja.

"The young crow approaches the snake at its den. Not how I expected your revenge, Itachi."

"If I wanted you dead, I would have done it already," Itachi commanded.

Orochimaru, somewhat more diplomatic than Itachi, narrowed his eyes. An uneasy wind blew between the two Leaf Rogues as Orochimaru waited for more information. Itachi was too merciless to speak twice.

"Orochimaru of the Sanin," Kisame broke the silence, stretching his lips over his teeth and maintaining eye contact in something between a greeting and a threat. "Good to meet you at last."

"And who are you?" the Sanin returned.

"Hoshigaki Kisame, formerly of the Hidden Mist. A pleasure."

"Mhm," Orochimaru hummed smug as a song, and his vertical pupils traced back to his main interest. The question was an insult: the most knowledgeable being in the five nations surely already knew who Hoshigaki Kisame was.

"I require information," Itachi said. He had reserved fatal judgement on Orochimaru at their last encounter in hopes that this Sanin's talents could be subverted. And one way or another, Itachi would collect his debts.

"Concerning?"

"Forbidden jutsu."

A sly, approving, perhaps flirtatious noise. "You know who to ask."

Orochimaru headed into his dark den, exposing his back in a gesture Itachi found coquette and arrogant. Orochimaru turned his head for Itachi to follow, and paced forward into the darkness. Kisame made eye contact with Itachi, sensing the matter was far more personal than it seemed. Perhaps Kisame's pause confirmed that he was welcome.

"Come," Itachi said. They needed to get away from where Zetsu could see them. And, he could use an ally's eyes in a house of the enemy. Itachi was not arrogant enough to think he was above being outsmarted by an Orochimaru with years to ruminate against him.

Like down the esophagus of a snake, the two rogues walked an earthen corridor after Orochimaru. Flaming sconces gleamed green on modern scientific equipment, and animal specimens lined the walls in glass jars. The jars contained mostly reptiles, but Kisame looked at a shark pup and a crow, and back at Itachi.

In the belly of his lair, Orochimaru halted before a green flaming hearth in a great stone hall. Library halls of tomes and scrolls stretched behind him. He faced Itachi with the flames at his back.

"How truly desperate you must be to come to me for wisdom, Itachi. However… _my knowledge has a price."_

Itachi did not come to trade.

"I've come to reap your debt. Your cooperation is wholly optional." Itachi's Sharingan spinned Mangekyou.

The fire at the hearth extinguished and it was completely, disorientingly black. Itachi and Kisame were blind. Itachi could not use his genjutsu without light. But he knew snakes could sense heat signatures as precisely as an eye could light. He felt Kisame tense next to him, and his arm reach for Samehada.

_Stay calm,_ Itachi thought at Kisame. He would feel it in his body.

"There's no need for that," Orochimaru deescalated from the darkness. Apparently he had changed his mind on the payment.

"Good." Itachi maintained curtly. "We will continue this discussion in the light."

The green fire returned. Samehada slid back into its hilt. Itachi's eyes retracted to their normal red.

"So."

"Tell me all you know about the Second Hokage's instant transportation technique."

An amused purr. "_Teleportation_. My, my, who has got you on the run, Itachi?"

"We've got places to be," Kisame maintained. The Mist ninja was right.

Itachi cared little about being on time for their next mission in the Land of Rivers. But he had to conceal the exact target of his question from both Kisame and Orochimaru. Madara had no doubt used something related to the Second Hokage's technique for his dimension-hopping. And until Itachi had a way to bind Madara to this plane, Itachi knew he would lose their next fight.

"As much as I respect the Second, it was the young Fourth who was the true master of space-time techniques," Orochimaru said, stepping towards his library.

"I understand. The Flying Thunder-God technique gained the Yellow Flash a run-on-sight order from the enemy alliance, and created the illusion that he was in multiple places at once."

"It seems you know of the effects. You are not completely uneducated," Orochimaru pulled a scroll from the wall.

"I would also like to know how to disable it."

Orochimaru paused. "You mean, how an enemy could theoretically stop the Fourth from transporting himself."

"Yes."

"There is _some_ research into this."

"Who did the research?"

Orochimaru pulled a second scroll. "Minato himself. However, Minato's research went incomplete. It involved a sealing jutsu currently unreplicatable."

Orochimaru opened the scroll to Itachi. On it was written a simple character in a brownish ink.

"Human blood," Itachi noted. Aged.

"Minato's blood, specifically. Unfortunately, as you know, Namikaze Minato has been a corpse for thirteen years."

"There must be another way," Itachi said.

"You could ask him."

"Make no jokes, or worse, _threats_, Orochimaru," Itachi warned.

Orochimaru dipped his sly head without submission. "I apologize."

"Are these two all you have on the transportation subject?"

"All that would be of succinct use to you."

Itachi turned the scroll in his hand. He would keep them for study. Orochimaru was too wise to object.

"We'll be taking our leave now." Itachi said.

"A moment."

Orochimaru gave him a snake's egg. It was rubbery and pill shaped, rather than hard and tear-drop shaped like a bird's.

"If you need to come here again, do be polite and use _this_."

Fair chance Itachi would awake to a snake hatchling poisoning him in his sleep, or find himself strapped on the demon's dissection table when activating it. But Itachi accepted the egg anyway. Same as the original Orochimaru, it could be repurposed or destroyed.

Itachi walked out of Orochimaru's lair, the two scrolls under his arm, purposefully slow and dominant. Then he and Kisame ran briefly in the daylight trees, not wanting to dwell in his territory, and slowed again to a walk when they thought themselves far enough from any possible backstabbing. Kisame extended the one of the two scrolls before him.

"'_Mark the jutsu formula on the target...'_ how are we supposed to use this? We can't teleport ourselves to this country if we've never been there before."

"Indeed we cannot."

"Well!" Kisame closed the scroll with unusual enthusiasm. "Too bad your transportation idea didn't work. We've got just a day left, I suppose we'll have to travel to the Land of Rivers _my way._"

As he spoke, Kisame looked through the jungle trees at the emerging ocean.

_Your way?_ Itachi battled a sinking premonition. "Does it involve giant sharks?"

"No."

Good.

"Just one question for you, Itachi."

"Yes?"

"Have you ever taken over a ship before?"

* * *

**_Author's note:_**

Aaand next up is chapter 8, the KisaIta zany sea adventure!

Many thanks to beta SilverLion for her help reviewing this chapter!

Thank you readers for being patient with this chapter. I had an especially difficult time navigating current world events. But it's important to be creative when you're stuck inside. Share the story with your friends if you like it, and let me know what you think :D

Steadfast,

Kelto


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